
Class 31" I / 
Book._ Al 



Ctpightl". 



CORfRIGHT DEPOSrr 



APOLOGETICA 



ELEMENTARY APOLOGETICS 

FOR 

PULPIT AND PEW 



BY 

The Rev. P. A. HALPIN 



NEW YORK 
JOSEPH F. WAGNER 



L 



LIBRARY of GONaRESS 
fwu Copiei rteceiy«>d 

FEB 8 1905 

-y Sopyngiii tntry 
CUiSS c»/ AAc. Nos 
OOPY B. 



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ol 



.rt^ 



l^ibi! <^bi^tat 



REMIGIUS LAFORT, S.T.L. 

Censor Librorum 



Slmprimatur 



*^ JOANNES M. FARLEY, D.D. 

/Irchiepiscopus 



New York September 5, 1904 



Copyright, 1905, by Joseph F. Wagner, New York 



^ 

.'>i 



^ 



Contents, 



Page 

Prefa.ce V 

I. Catholic Loyalty i 

II. The Rocks which wreck Faith 4 

III. Reason is a sufficient Guide for Me 6 

IV. What is Faith ? 8 

V. The Uses of Reason lo 

VI. The Abuses of Reason I2 

VII. Some Safeguards of Faith 14 

VIII. The Boldness of Unbelief 16 

IX. Why Men doubt in Matters of Faith . ^ . .18 

X. Of what Use is Religion ? 20 

XI. One Religion is as Good as Another .... 22 

XII. There is no God 24 

XIII. There is no God 26 

XIV. There is no God 28 

XV. There is no God 30 

XVI. There is no God 32 

XVII. There is no God 34 

XVIII. There is no God 36 

XIX. There is no God 38 

XX. God can not be known 40 

XXI. God can not be known 43 

XXII. Miracles are an Absurdity 46 

XXIII. Miracles are Incredible 49 

XXIV. Mysteries are Unworthy of the Human Mind ... 52 

XXV. God does not Care for the World ..... 55 

XXVI. God does not Care for the World 58 

XXVII. God does not Care for the World 60 



CONTENTS. 



XXVIII. God does not Care for His World 

XXIX. God Cares not for His World . 

XXX. God has no Care for His World 

XXXI. God has no Care for His World 

XXXII. God exercises no Providence over His World 

XXXIII. God is unsolicitous for Souls 

XXXIV. God is not solicitous for Souls . 

XXXV. God's Providence stretches not out over Souls 

XXXVI. God's Providence does not protect Souls 

XXXVII. There is no Hereafter 

XXXVIII. There is no Hereafter 

XXXIX. There is no Hereafter 
XL. There is no Hereafter 
XLI. There is no Hereafter 
XLII. There is no Hereafter 
XLIII. There is no Hereafter 
XLIV. Jesus Christ only a Man 
XLV. Christ a Man Only 
XLVI. Christ a Man Only 
XLVII. Christ was a Man Only 
XLVIII. Christ a Mere Man Only 
XLIX. Christ a Mere Man 
L. There is no Eternal Punishment 
LI. There is no Eternal Punishment 
LIT. There is no Eternal Punishment 



Page 

63 
66 
68 
71 
73 
76 

79 
82 

85 
88 

91 
94 

97 
too 
103 
106 
109 

112 

"5 

118 

121 
124 
127 
130 
132 



preface. 



THE chapters contained in these pages are an attempt to suggest a 
method of presenting the basic facts of Christianity in the light of 
reason alone. As much as possible the arguments advanced make no appeal 
to divine revelation. They contain proofs drawn from natural sources only. 
They are an essay in the direction of sustaining that the teachings of 
religion are eminently reasonable. They are an endeavor to show that 
man, led solely by his reason, is compelled to admit that, of all the views 
entertained by mankind relatively to the origin and destiny of the race, 
that view alone is to be accepted which is upheld by Christianity, and 
especially by the Catholic Church. Infidelity has had the ear of humanity 
smce the beginning. The reason therefor is discoverable in this, that it 
has pandered to the common desire to remove all the restrictions with 
which religion, divinely inspired, has sought to impose limits on physical 
freedom, has sought to inculcate the saving idea that there is a law decreed 
in heaven which coerces, with moral pressure, the lower inclinations of 
human nature. The plan is a very simple one. It discusses all the 
watchwords of incredulity which have had such destructive sway. It aims 
at demonstrating, by reason only, that these rallying cries are only lures to 
individual debasement and ultimate loss. It has touched upon the limita- 
tions of reason. It has offered to point out the proper function of intel- 
ligence and to assign to it its proper place and most becoming attitude. 
These preliminary notions established, the plan proceeds to take up the 
insensate clamor that there is no religion, no God, no hereafter, no hell, 
no eternity, and of course does not omit that pivotal dogma that Christ is 
neither a myth nor a man only, but God of God, Light of Light, very God 
of very God. That the work has been imperfectly done is transparent. 
These chapters are skeletons, in the literal sense of the word. There is no 
flesh upon the bones, there is no blood in the veins, there are neither 

V 



vi PREFACE. 

veins nor arteries. The compilation is only a suggestion, but as such not 
entirely valueless. There is no doubt that churchgoers need instruction 
and need enlightenment upon the very subjects treated herein and, are 
avid of information that makes no call upon their faith, but rather on their 
minds. The matter for these sketches was found already prepared in the 
theologies and philosophies used in our colleges and seminaries. With 
these remarks we leave our experiment to the merciful consideration of 
all who may be patient enough to look over these pages. 

THE AUTHOR. 



Apologetica* 



A Coutx of Fifty-two Sketches for Short Sermons on Popular 

Topics and Questions, Maintaining:, Explaining:, and 

Defending: the Catholic Position. 



I. CatboHc Xo^alt^ 

Introduction. — The need of Catholic loyalty, that is, the habit of 
fidelity to our Catholic Church in its teachings and precepts. This 
loyalty which is needed always, but especially now, is compacted of 
loyalty of life or living, loyalty of will, loyalty of reason. 

1. Loyalty to the life enforced by Catholic principle is the best 
and only life worth living. 

2. Loyalty of will — adhesion of our will to all God proposes to the 
Christian through the Church. 

3. Loyalty of reason, which rounds off the whole loyalty of the 
Catholic. 

Loyalty is fidelity. It may mean being true to friends, to country, 
to ourselves, to principles, to God. Fidelity to God is highest and 
most imperative. This loyalty is an adhesion to God in all His rela- 
tions to man. God's relation to us finds its most perfect expression 

I 



2 APOLOGETICA, 

in what He has taught us to believe and to do. In other words, it is 
the religion or the Church which He has established for our guidance 
in belief and conduct. This loyalty is always a duty, but in these 
times wherein so much opposition to the Church exists it is more 
than ever an obligation. The loyalty of the Catholic to his religion 
manifests itself in three ways. It is threefold devotion or loyalty 
of mind, of will, of life. 

I. Loyalty of Life is living according to the dictates of religion. It 
is shaping our whole conduct according to the precepts of the Church. 
It is unnecessary to state that the Catholic Church is the oldest and 
the only Church. By the excellence of its notes and marks it should 
elicit devotion. It is the essential pattern of all living. It makes for 
the only life worth living. There are outside the Church beautiful 
lives, but they are beautiful only inasmuch as they approximate the 
teachings of the Church and are imperfect wherein they recede from 
those teachings. Among the reasons which call for this loyalty of 
life are the splendor of Catholic truth and Catholic ethics and all that 
the Church has it in her power to do for the individual here and here- 
after, for the family and the country — loyalty during life and until 
and in death. 

II. Loyalty of Will. This is adhesion of our will to the will of 
the Church. It is implied in life-loyalty, but it goes to the further 
length of not only strengthening exterior living, but of permeating 
the interior man with the beautifying and vivifying principles of 
Catholicity. The will must be loyally Catholic. It must, as it can, 
control the whole man. It must dictate loyalty to all the faculties 
and senses of man. It must command unquestioning faith and heroic, 
if necessary, charity. It is well to remember that our will is our 
own. We may do with it as we please. If inclined to doubt, the will 
may compel assent ; if disinclined to righteous conduct, the will may 



CATHOLIC LOYALTY, 3 

compel action. The life and the strength of the will are maintained 
by grace and the channels of grace — i. e., sacraments. 

III. Loyalty of Reason. We have, perhaps, against all laws of 
sequence reserved this for the last place. This plan is introductory 
to a series which aims at showing the rational foundations of our 
faith and at presenting answers to the flippant, though dangerous, 
objections which are the cant words of the age. Reason-loyalty is 
the most needed. This loyalty is the subjecting our reason to every- 
thing taught by the Church. It means unconditional, though not 
servile, surrender. The first element of this devotion is found in 
humility of reason, in acknowledging its limitations, in an unwilling- 
ness to take for granted what is alleged against revelation, in a dis- 
position of allegiance running through all discussion. The essential 
altitude of reason is one whereby it confesses that God and the 
Church can not be mistaken, but that it itself may and can be at 
fault. The province of reason will be examined hereinafter and its 
legitimate obligations established. Many are the advantages to be 
derived from this triple loyalty. Enough is it to enumerate peace 
of mind, loftiness of principle, happiness in this world and the next. 



II. Zbc IRocfta Mblcb Mtecli faltb^ 

Introduction. — There is none of a man's possessions which is to 
be more carefully protected than his faith. There is not one of his 
holdings which is more constantly threatened. Sailing over life's 
sea, rocks imperiling his faith are piercing the waves everywhere, 
and narrow indeed is the channel through which he is to pilot his 
way in safety. We assume that faith is more precious to him than 
anything else that is his. It is not an assumption ; it is a certainty, 
and a dread one. 

I. What is a man's faith to him? Faith is the " argument of the 
unseen." It is a chart well mapped out and marking unmistakably 
the points of danger on the ocean of life. It describes the port 
whence he sails ; it directs, in all kinds of weather, his journey toward 
the haven of his destiny. It assures him that he derives his being 
from God — that his whole being must tend Godward, and it shows 
him the only way. It speaks of the unseen — of the unseen of his 
past, of his present, of his future. It furnishes him with the knowl- 
edge of the things that have been and are and will be. It brings 
within his ken the whole path of salvation. Impossible is it to calcu- 
late the advantages of faith. Impossible almost is it to enumerate 
them. Such being the pricelessness of faith, what are — 

II. Its perils? The perils which faith is exposed to are manifold 
and ubiquitous and extreme and insidious. They spring from every 
quarter. They wear the guise of friendship ; they borrow the garb 
of angels of light; they underlie adversity; they go hand in hand 
with success. Society is bristling with those dangers ; so is wealth, 
and so, beyond a doubt, is the flesh. The arch enemy of mankind 

4 



THE ROCKS WHICH WRECK FAITH. 5 

has his spear raised ever to wound and, if possible, kill faith. The 
world passes it by — faith is not fashionable; it savors too much of 
poverty and low birth and ignorance. Society sometimes wears its 
livery because it is a token of respectability. But faith is a reproach 
to the thoughts and workings of society; is a hindrance; is a 
menace to its pleasures. The flesh has views diametrically opposed to 
those of faith. Let us eat and drink and be merry, for to-morrow 
we die. Such is the chorus of the flesh, and the tones of faith can 
not be heard, so boisterous is the singing of the flesh, or, if heard, 
they weaken the enthusiasm and mar the gaiety. As for the devil — 
he is a murderer and a liar from the beginning, and faith is his per- 
sistent and indomitable foe and accuser and judge. 

III. Other dangers. Ignorance of the individual. He does not 
know even the essentials of his faith. What he knows not, he loves 
not, and if it bars his way, he hates. The ambition and the greed 
and the selfishness of the individual weaken faith. So does riotous 
living; so do the passions gratified unlawfully; so does evil com- 
panionship; so likewise free and loose thinking about matters of 
faith. More than anything else the lawless literature of the day — 
books that are immoral, books atheistic, books cynical, books with- 
out ideals higher than the inspirations of mere nature, books ridicul- 
ing, caricaturing religion, its tenets and practices. These are the 
dangers. The need of guarding against them is obvious. Keep 
the faith. It will keep you here and hereafter. 



III. 1?ea6on ia a Sufficient 6ui&e for flDe* 

Introduction. — It is hard to say which is the more culpable or 
more dangerous — disloyalty of words or disloyalty of action. Wher- 
ever the greater guilt lies, this much is certain, that expressions 
against our faith — so-called maxims derogatory to our Church — 
are caught up even by children, and so are more widely spread and 
in this time of so-called independent thought become war cries 
around which the masses unfortunately are only too glad to rally. I 
must use very frequently the epithet " so-called " because investiga- 
tion will reveal that the terms express principles or facts which have 
no foundation in reason or reality. 

I. What is the meaning of the phrase at the head of this sketch ? 
It means that my reason is sufficient for me in everything. It means 
that by the unaided light of my reason I find the solution of all the 
problems of existence. It means that I need neither God nor the 
Church nor any man for my teacher. I can discover alone all that 
is needed to be known regarding this life and the other. This 
crude putting of the significance of the phrase used by so many is 
startling. Nay, it is more — it is shocking. What is the truth of the 
matter ? It is not a phrase that fact or reason is able to substantiate. 
What facts can it bring to its aid ? Collect all the experience of the 
past. Has any one man's reason sufficed to enlighten him as to all 
that is required for his development as a man living with other men 
and depending on some force outside of himself for his coming into 
or his going out of life ? Has the collective reason of the race been 
sufficient ? The pages of history give the reply. What has been the 
teaching of Paganism? What is the teaching of philosophy so- 

6 



REASON IS A SUFFICIENT GUIDE FOR ME. 7 

called ? Has there been certainty, or conviction, or persuasion ? Has 
there been accord? Have all discovered the same God, the same 
duties, the same obligations, the same meaning of life? What has 
been said about God and religion in previous ages and what is being 
said now? No single man has found out every truth or any truth 
plenarily. The same is to be said of the combined efforts of the 
learned when they relied on reason alone, and the same will have to 
be said until the end. 

n. The " principle " is not supported by reason. Reason can 
not prove that of itself it is sufficient to guide man in the intricacies 
of existence. First, fact disproves emphatically the assertion of the 
all sufficing quality of reason. Reason shows us the impotency of 
itself in the settlement of what is most obvious. What is the first 
fact that is forced upon individual reason ? The fact that it is lim- 
ited; that its vision has a very near horizon; that there are things 
not only above or beyond it or below it, but apparently upon its 
level which it sees not, or, if it does see, sees very dimly. Reason 
knows that it is fallible as well as limited — fallible inasmuch as 
from very patent facts it deduces wrong conclusions. A man knows 
that his reason has been busier correcting old views than making 
new ones. The reasonable conclusion that the most experienced man 
evolves is that he has made many mistakes in the use of his reason, 
that it is very dark therein, that his whole being yearns for a light 
which reason alone can not enkindle. 



IV. Mbat i0 faltb? 

Introduction. — The more we inquire into the nature of the great 
gift of faith, the more we may be impelled to withstand all attacks 
against it, the more we may be animated to estimate its value and 
to prize it at its true worth. So let it be considered first, that: 

I. Faith is a gift. It is ours only by presentation. We have 
not begotten it; we have not stretched out our hands for it and 
seized it. It is not ours to summon as we please. There are 
myriads in the world looking for it. It is a donation. It is 
gratuitous. It comes from God, and no one forced Him to be- 
stow it. Every Catholic, as his reason shows, as he awakens into 
consciousness sooner or later, finds himself in possession of it. 
God is not an " Indian giver." He never takes back faith from an 
individual once He grants it. Yet it disappears sometimes, or 
rather often, from the hold of the possessor. Like every other 
gift, the gift, for example, of existence, God's concurrence, in order 
to conserve it, is absolutely indispensable. When a man loses his 
faith he interposes between God's action and his possession an ob- 
stacle something like the short-circuiting of an electrical current — ^the 
burning out of a fuse, for instance — and lo! there is no inter- 
mediary between God and the soul in the matter of faith, and the 
grand, bright light goes out, and " life eternal is lost and the man 
does not know " Thee — only true God and Him whom Thou hast 
sent Christ Jesus (John xvii. 3). It is to be understood that nc 
man loses the gift of faith save by his own fault. God never takes 
it away. Man rejects it or man throws it from him. 

8 



IVHAT IS FAITH f 9 

II. Faith is a gift of transcendent excellence, (a) It is the 
foundation, the corner, the keystone of the Church, (b) The 
root of that tree Nabuchodonosor saw in his dream (Dan. iv. 7). 
(c) The beginning of salvation, the origin of justification, (d) 
It raises us above brutes, above the senses, (e) It elevates us 
above nature; it supernaturalizes us. (f) It is the assimilation 
of our nature with the divine nature, (g) It is the dawning of 
the beatific vision, (h) It is a new sense, telescopic in its powers. 
(1) It is certainty in doubt. (;) A haven in the storm, {k) It 
is the way, the truth, and the life. 

III. It is delicate beyond the delicacy of anything in nature. 
The hot breath of passion melts it as the sun dissolves the frost 
creations on our windows or in the forest. It is as delicate as 
chastity, as charity. The Christian graces are Chastity, Charity, 
Faith. They wither at a touch — they are killed by a thought. 

Conclusion. — Our care of this rare gift should be commensurate 
with its preciousness. (Cf. Hurter, Vol. I, and S.S., passim et 
ubique,) 



V. ^be tleee of 1Rea0on* 

Introduction. — Reason is the greatest human prerogative. It 
distinguishes man from all the inferior orders of creation. By it 
he is superior to the inanimate, the vegetable, the animal world. 
Reason is given man to keep him from sinking below his inherited 
level, below the beasts, below inert nature. It is a superadded 
sense, if the term may be used. It is within his control to a large 
degree; it is beyond his command in, perhaps, a still larger de- 
gree. What is it and what are its uses? 

I. It is a seeing faculty; it is the immaterial eye of the indi- 
vidual. It perceives. Its object is truth. It does not make truth, 
no more than any eye creates the objects depicted upon its retina. 
The eye does not bring into being the thing it looks upon — ^that 
thing simply floats into the area of its vision. Were there no such 
object man would not behold it. For instance, the reason, or the 
intellect of man, does not make it true that two and two are four, 
but because two and two are four the mind sees it to be so. 
Run through the wide domain of facts intellectual, axioms, 
maxims, principles and the like — these facts are not products of 
the mind; they simply are and present themselves to the mind 
under investigating or favoring conditions. All this makes for 
the dependence not of truth upon the reason or mind, but for the 
dependence of mind, reason — call it what you will — upon truth. 
We talk of creation in a literary sense. In the strictest meaning, 
creation, that is, in the sense in which the term creation signifies 
the making of something out of nothing, there is no such thing 

lO 



THE USES OF REASON. ii 

in the intellectual order, whether it be angelic or divine. Even 
God does not create truth. God is Truth, and from Him all truth 
flows into every created mind. Literary creation would, at best, 
be only the harmonious wedding of truths already known or the 
offspring thereby generated. 

II. Another use of reason is the comparing one truth with an- 
other, and from the comparison deducing other intellectual facts — 
in TK'eighing the values of arguments adduced in support of some 
proposition advanced. Hence, may be deduced the principal 
function of reason — in other words, its principal use. Its duty 
is not to imagine; imagination is another faculty below and sub- 
ordinate to reason; nor to fancy, which is practically the same 
thing. Neither is its duty to originate. There will be no difficulty 
in understanding how originating in all matters, and especially in 
religious matters, is the parent of absurdity and error. If reason, 
unbiased, keeps its eye not on itself or its own vagaries, but on the 
light; if it consult neither feeling nor interest, but only fact or 
truth, the outcome will be the discovery of all that is needful in 
many things, but especially in discriminating between what is false 
and true in religion. 



VI. Zhc W)\XBCB of IReaeon. 

Introduction.— Rczson is given man to enable him to ascertain 
the truth in all things beneficial to his material welfare. Above all to 
his spiritual welfare — the welfare of his higher, or rather, highest 
nature. Properly used — used as indicated in the last instruction — 
used as its very nature imperiously demands — it will lead to good ; 
abused it will just as inevitably lead to disaster. It is a pity that we 
must confess that man, a reasonable creature, has been most irrational 
in the use of that very faculty whereby it is in his power to rise 
to a height just a little lower than that of the angels. Man abuses 
his reason. 

I. Naturally all the misuse a man makes of his reason comes from 
his misconception of the nature and object and limits of that sublime 
faculty. He mistakes its nature, and, therefore, supposes that it is 
in its power to make or unmake truth, that within the grasp of his 
denial and admission lies the existence of truth. In another instruc- 
tion we learned that reason does not make truth, but that truth is 
made, or, rather, is for it, that truth existed before any human 
mind, as the spectacle of the universe was before any human eye. 

II. Man abuses the reason which God has given him by suppos- 
ing that the whole region of truth is his to discover, to roam over, 
to command. He so much revels in his reason, and his reason is so 
much of a joy to him, that he allows it to gallop blindly, reinlessly, 
hither and thither, as its own sweet will dictates. In other words, 
liberty of thought is his slogan. A man can think what he pleases 
and as he pleases. It is noticeable that one allows reason more 

19 



THE ABUSES OF REASON. 13 

liberty than one allows the senses, say, for there are things from 
which one turns away and against which one shuts one's eyes. In 
thought, so the axiom permits, there is no restriction. This freedom 
of license of thought leads to boldness. And so another abuse of 
reason is, 

III. Unlimitation. No bounds to the gambols of this faculty. 
No sacredness. No horizons. No remembering that there are 
things twixt heaven and earth that are not dreamed of by reason. 
This limitlessness of reason's prerogatives begets a spirit of reckless 
intrusiveness, for it assumes to be the sole umpire in matters of 
truth and falsehood, of good and evil. In its wanton sportiveness it 
is — is reason — its own law, and it legislates for God and man, for 
time and eternity. This little farthing rushlight aims at lighting 
up the darkness of the immensities. Alas ! What is the corrective ? 
Watch the reaction of such excesses in history and in the race, in the 
family and the individual. 



VII. Some SafcQuarb^ of ifaitb. 

Introduction. — If it is important to save one's life, it is more im- 
portant to save one's soul, whence arises the momentousness of pro- 
tecting one's faith. Our view is rather a rational one than a spiritual 
one, and hence the means indicated are all in the line of reason, and 
directed against the difficulties which an inflated and rampant 
rationalism creates against faith and in favor of so-called mental 
independence. 

I. One safeguard lies in a man's using his reason, not his imagi- 
nation nor his fancy — lies in his following not the bent or dictation 
of his passions, or of self-interest, or of policy, or of human respect, 
but the inexorable rules of logic. To put it more simply, he must 
be really reasonable, truly rational. Where a man can, let him think 
for himself ; where he can not, let him consult those who are in a posi- 
tion to help him. This will form for him the very profitable habit 
of not readily accepting all the teachings and gospels on matters of 
faith which are continually coming into existence and just as rapidly 
disappearing. The one great fact which takes up nearly all the 
spaces of history is the extravagant caperings of the human mind in 
matters of religion. This fact is as instructive as it is vast. It forces 
one to a salutary distrust of one's own views. It compels one to 
look beyond one's self for light and guidance. To the honest man 
all seems so dark and uncertain that he looks around for some land- 
marks to keep him in the path. Thus, an indispensable condition of 
safety in this all important matter of faith would seem to be the 
need of being on one's guard against what might be called the un- 

14 



SOME SAFEGUARDS OF FAITH. 15 

tutored impulses of reason which invariably culminate in irrational 
conclusions. The secure attitude seems to be one of distrust. All 
this might be maximized thus: Slowness in admitting what the 
populace readily catches up. Find the one who knows — find the ac- 
credited teacher. 

II. The second safeguard is the search after instruction, after 
full information, after facts. The ignorance of Catholics concerning 
their Church is as widespread as it is lamentable and fatal. Their 
ignorance of the textual or surface meaning of the doctrines of the 
Church, their misunderstanding of Catholic practices, Catholic de- 
votions, their utter misinformation on points of Catholic history is 
appalling. Many are not aware of what Catholics are obliged to be- 
lieve. Few are able to give an honest inquirer the mere formula of 
the simplest tenets of the Church. IMany admit, through ignorance, 
the false doctrines imputed to the Church, are unable, I will not say 
to refute, but even to deny the frequent and patent calumnies which 
are uttered. A man must know his faith. To this end he must 
read, must hear, must learn. In this wise, his knowledge of his 
faith increasing, his love for it will grow, and there will arise in his 
soul an ambition to protect his grand faith for himself, to defend 
it against calumniators and to propagate it among his kind. 



VIII. ^be Bolbncss of Iflnbelief. 

Introduction. — In contrast with the modesty of faith and virtue in 
general is the effrontery of unbelief. Enemies of religion accuse its 
votaries of dogmatism. By dogmatism they mean arrogance in stat- 
ing opinions and positive assertion without proof. This definition, as 
all history attests, recoils on themselves. Recall all the propositions 
which have been uttered by so-called reformers, so-called scientists, 
so-called philosophers and infidels. We find that their affirmations 
are: 

I. Bold in the extreme. They are hold with the shamelessness of 
hostility. Who can recall without shuddering the vituperations of 
Voltaire and the French philosophists ? It would be almost not only 
beyond good taste, but unpardonable to repeat what has been said by 
the Gnostics, by Luther and his school, by the English Atheists, by 
Diderot, and others too numerous to mention. They are bold with 
the impudence of the unscientific nature of their averments. Their 
conclusions are unfounded. They reason contrary to all the laws of 
reason. From a particular and isolated fact they deduce general 
laws. With a single misdemeanor or a few criminal acts they frame 
an accusation against all religionists, all Churches, all authority. 
Witness the progress of geology as against religion ; witness biology 
and the cognate sciences. Notice the hastiness with which they pro- 
nounce against faith on the strength of a single discovery in any of 
the sciences. It is impossible for a new planet or new star or a spot 
on the sun to be proclaimed, it is impossible for a new element or 
new combination of substances to be declared, without their seizing 

i6 



THE BOLDNESS OF UNBELIEF. 17 

the discovery as a flamboyant herald dishonoring Holy Scripture or 
foretelling the existence of all creeds. They are hold with the dastard- 
liness of falsehood. They stick not at a lie. They utter calumny 
after calumny. Their whole warfare has usurped the domain of 
history with battalions of lies. Their whole procedure has been a 
" conspiracy against the truth." The whole labor of Apologetics 
may be reduced to the task of again and again hurling back the same 
falsehoods in the teeth of the adversaries of faith. From all this we 
may learn : 

II. How to meet this boldness of unbelief, ist. It behooves us 
to be as bold as they are, as bold in denying as they are in affirming. 
2d. They throw the burthen of proof on us, whereas all the laws of 
ratiocination compel them to exhibit the evidence which supports 
what they allege. 3d. To be assured that somewhere among the 
enlightened, among our pastors, our theologians there is a satis- 
factory answer to their bold, ignorant, false allegations. 4th. We 
must remain undisturbed, undismayed. We are in possession of the 
truth. We may not understand, but we know what we hold is true. 
We know that we are passing, or rather that our faith is passing for 
the moment through a trial which the faith of millions in the last 
two thousand years sustained. Their faith came out vindicated, 
purified, glorified, and so will it be with ours after this temporary 
struggle. 



IX. Mbi? riDcn Doubt in fIDattera of ffaitb* 

Introduction. — We say advisedly doubt, because no one, Catholic 
or non-Catholic, has ever been certain of any proposition which con- 
tradicts the great truths of religion, revealed or natural. These 
doubts exist in the minds of believers and unbelievers. The wonder 
to the thinking man is how there can exist any hesitation in assent- 
ing to the teachings of the Church, which has been in the forefront 
of evidence since the coming of Christ. Two thousand years in 
existence, and it wears no wrinkle on its majestic brow. The longest 
lived of all the so-called Churches, it has lost none of its vigor ; it is 
still erect and has not yet been attacked by any of the forerunners of 
decrepitude; assailed more repeatedly and with more hatred than 
any other creed, it shows not the mark of a single scar. Why, there- 
fore, do men doubt? 

I. Because of indifference. Men are too busy in seeking a liveli- 
hood, too busy in the pursuit of wealth and fame. They permit 
themselves to be absorbed by the cares of existence. The visible 
world intrudes itself more strenuously upon their attention. They 
look not beyond these horizons. The body and all that goes to make 
up its comfort completely fills their vision. The interests of earth 
seem paramount, and they hesitate when they are summoned either 
by the voice of their conscience or by the voice of the legitimate 
teachers. They have learned the lesson by their habits of thought 
and by environment that this world is everything to which every- 
thing else is subordinate, and so they walk along the pathway of life 
in ignorance and indifference in the question of the eternal truths, 
and hence no wonder their attitude is one of doubt. 

i8 



WHY MEN DOUBT IN MATTERS OF FAITH. 19 

II. Because of the passions. They deliver themselves up to the 
exterior dissipations of life. They follow wherever their senses or 
the gratification of their inclinations calls them. They become the 
slaves of their desires, immersed in libertinism. The flesh is all in 
all to them. The spirit is weakened. Yet they must solace themselves 
in their saner moments. To admit the teaching of faith would be to 
admit the folly and the danger of their condition, would make them 
dread future retribution. Reflection becomes agony for them, and 
they console themselves by a doubting perhaps that what is said of 
God and heaven and hell may be fiction, or, at any rate, exaggerated. 
When does a Catholic allow doubt to enter his soul ? Is it when he 
aspires to a better life? Is it not rather when having thrown all 
the commandments of God to the winds he elects to remain on the 
forbidden paths? 

III. Because of what we might call the glamour of science. This 
is a scientific age. Science seems to have run a prosperous race 
and to have left faith behind. Science, when its voice is heard in- 
distinctly, seems to proclaim itself queen, arbiter of matter and 
thought in the universe. Among the aristocracy of intellect it is 
more the fashion to assent to the conclusions of science than to the 
declarations of faith. One can not be a scientist and a believer. 
Hence belief seems to smack of lack of culture, of ignorance, of the 
masses, of the proletariat. How many are misled by such views as 
the foregoing! Yet how superficial it all is, and how uncertain the 
foundation on which it rests and how easily refuted! It may be 
said that of these causes of doubt the most dangerous and the most 
prolific is indifference. 



I 



X. ®f Mbat iUse I0 IReliQion? 

Introduction. — This is a question not seldom asked. The motives 
for making this query are not a few. Some urge it because they are 
indifferent, because it makes no difference to them whether there be 
such a thing as reHgion or not. Others because they see so many 
rehgionists no better, but rather worse, than those who profess no 
religion. Others because they do not understand the meaning of the 
term. Others because they are unwilling to admit the existence of 
anything beyond this life. Others again because, so they pretend, 
man has no obligations except to himself and his fellow men. TRe 
adversaries of religion in general are those who care not for it, i. e., 
those who are indifferent, those who are ignorant, and the materialist 
or atheist. It is to be considered, therefore, 

I. What is religion f A definition is hardly necessary, for it can 
not be reasonably doubted that every one, though unable to give it 
expression, has a conception, dim or clear, of it. This fact is already 
an argument in its favor. It is an acknowledgment, is religion, of 
our indebtedness to a superior Being, to whom we owe life and all 
that life brings, and to whom, as a consequence, we owe gratitude, 
honor, and obedience. If this Supreme Authority has declared in 
any way His will to us, that will we are obliged to submit to. Re- 
ligion is the sum total of our duties to God. To call, therefore, into 
question the use of religion is a misunderstanding of the nature of 
the highest Being as well as of our most important obligations. 
When a man says, What is the good of religion? it is as if he in so 
many words said, What is the use of God? What use is there in 
man's fulfilling his most essential duties in life? 

30 



OF WHAT USE IS RELIGION? 21 

II. The importance of religion. Put plainly, the question we have 
undertaken to answer sounds blasphemous. It sounds so because 
it is so. It is well to translate the utterances of unbelief into their 
every-day, commonplace language. Religion is of use because it is 
important, and more important, than anything else in this world. 
It is the first of all conceptions, I might say. It is fundamental. It 
is the admission that God has created and, therefore, owns us, and 
because He owns us He has inalienable rights with regard to us. The 
fact remains that if the creature comes from God, and subsists 
through Him, man may do only what God wills, and go through life 
along the path appointed by Him, and tend toward the end God had 
in view in bringing him out of nothing. 

III. A few questions. Is this important? Is it important that 
man should at every moment of his existence acknowledge his de- 
pendence upon God? Is indifference in this matter rational? Is it 
safe? Because some who profess religion are not what they should 
be, is it reasonable to blame religion for it? Are they not wicked 
in spite of religion? Does religion teach them iniquity? On what 
does the materialist base his view ? Is he sure there is no after life ? 
Quite sure ? What is his proof ? Where is his authority ? Is there 
no use in an institution which declares man's origin? In an institu- 
tion which enlightens man as to his primal duties ? In an institution 
which makes for righteousness here and security hereafter? 



XI. ®ne IReligion 10 ae (Boob ae Hnotber, 

Introduction. — The error implied in this assertion is of close kin- 
ship to the falsehood which is contained in the blasphemous question, 
" What is the use of religion ? " They both are tainted with the 
gtiilt of what may be called indifferentism. There may be said to be 
two kinds of indifferentism. One is general, and applies to all re- 
ligion. It might take this form of expression : It is a matter of no 
concern whether one professes religion or not. About this miscon- 
ception enough has been said already. The second species is ex- 
pressed in the heading of this sketch. What a sweeping declaration 
it is ! What arrogance and what ignorance it displays. It displays 
arrogance first. 

I. The presumption of the opinion is readily perceived when we 
consider that it runs counter to the prevailing practice of mankind, 
of whom the majority profess some form of belief with a persistency 
and a loyalty which admits of no other form. It is a slur on the 
early history of religion, of which so many members clung so stead- 
fastly to one rather than to another creed, that they suffered exile, 
persecution and torture, and death rather than surrender or change 
in the least their faith. It is pharisaical inasmuch as the indifferentist 
thanks God, if he ever thanks God, or if he has the crudest notion of 
the Divinity, that he is not like other men. It would be difficult to 
characterize the indifferentist; it would be difficult to tabulate his 
mental conditions, and it might be dangerous to diagnose his moral 
symptoms. As for his logic — and individuals of the indifferentist 
stamp pride themselves on the inerrancy of their rational processes — 

22 



ONE RELIGION IS AS GOOD AS ANOTHER 23 

it is almost ridiculous enough to excite inextinguishable laughter. 
For it is not to be sanctioned by reason that it matters not what 
religion one professes, that one religion is as good as another. One 
religion is not as good as another: 

II. (a) There are religions, and their dogmas are contrary to 
truth and their ethics an abomination. They propose what is untrue 
for belief and for practice what is wrong. One religion, therefore, 
is not as good as another, because there are some religions which 
are bad. (b) In the variety of creeds which exist, some contradict 
each other totally, and all contradict each other in part. Is it logical 
to admit both the yea and nay of doctrine? (c) God is the founder 
of religion. Is He equally the founder of contradiction and false- 
hood? Are all religions equally acceptable to Him? (d) Christ 
established one religion. He said to His apostles, teach all nations 
to " observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." Did 
He teach His disciples all the errors, all the heresies, all the schisms 
with which the religions of the world have been inundated? Did 
He establish one or many religions? If many, well might we ex- 
claim, What was the use of His preaching? What has He brought 
to mankind ? Heresy, schism, error did not need a divine propagator. 
These things are human creations. Truth is one; God is one; 
Christ is one ; religion is one. Is the God of indifferentism an ador- 
able God? Is He the most perfect being ? Is He substantial sanctity 
and substantial truth if one religion is as good as another ? Arrogant, 
ignorant, criminal, and blasphemous is the affirmation of the indiffer- 
entist. 



XII. Zbcve i0 no 6o^ 

Introduction. — The expressing, the writing down of the above 
affirmation shocks universally. It is an assertion which points to a 
revolting order of intelligence and conduct. Not in all the languages 
of the world, not in all utterances of mankind is there an averment 
so horrible, so blasphemous, so ignominious. It reveals mental and 
moral degeneracy of the lowest type. So abominable is it that with 
exceptions which may easily be counted there is not a philosopher 
who refuses to affirm that any one professing atheism is insincere or 
brutalized. This is true of thinkers before and since Christ. Says 
Cicero : " The existence of God is so manifest that I can hardly be- 
lieve in the sanity of the one who denies it " (De Nat. Deorum. 11. , 
44). " Nobody," says St. Augustine, "denies God save one whose 
interest it is that there be no God." We may safely admit that God 
is. Atheists there are, but not atheists of the mind, but of the heart 
and the passions. It is false that there is no God, for it is true that 
God is. 

I. It is false that there is no God. One grows weary of defend- 
ing the glorious truths of Christianity against enemies who advance 
no new difficulties, but persistently repeat those which have been 
urged since the beginning. Let us just as defiantly deny the atheistic 
proposition as they boldly put it forth. Let us ask them to prove that 
there is no God. Have they ever proved it? Have they ever, with 
all their ingenuity, framed an argument of which the propositions 
are undeniable, and from which is logically deducible the conclusion : 
God does not exist? All they have alleged amounts merely to a 

24 



THERE IS NO GOD. 25 

slender, perhaps hanging on the gossamer thread of an unrea- 
sonable doubt. Have they ever propagated their irreligion? that is, 
propagated so as to plant in minds a conviction immovable, or to 
touch hearts with a persuasion which remains in spite of threats, 
persecution, and death ? It is to be remembered that we are treating 
of what is termed theoretical atheism. Until more forcible proofs 
than mere assertion are forthcoming, the belief in God's existence 
will be an undisputed possession in the thoughts of men. This is 
only a negative reply, but positive answers are not wanting. 

II. While it is false that God does not exist, it must be true that the 
existence of the Supreme Being can not be questioned. It must not 
be forgotten in all these sketches we prescind from faith. Faith 
makes every thing clear. Here and now we are appealing to com- 
mon sense. It is obvious to the most uncultured mind just on the 
confines of sanity that God is a word we have used and heard since 
our childhood. Not only we have heard and used it, but, moreover, 
we understood its meaning. Perhaps w^e grasped its meaning more 
readily than the signification of anything else proposed to us. What 
does this fact prove? It proves that the idea of a Supreme Being 
is natural to the human soul, that this voice of nature is sincere and 
unalterable. Says Cicero : " An opinion which has in its favor the 
positive testimony of the human race can not but be true " (De Nat. 
Deor., I, 17). And Aristotle declared that, "What all men hold 
instinctively as true, is a truth of nature." This belief grows with 
our development. If it weakens during the storm of passions, it 
breaks out like a blaze at the hour of death. Like a rainbow, it 
reaches from our cradle to our grave, and life would be dark without 
it. This is a fact. Have atheists such a fact in their repertoire of 
sophistries ? 



XIII. Zbcve iB no 6ob. 

Introduction. — Once more let us stigmatize this declaration as the 
most shameless, the most profligate ever made. To utter it there is 
required an effrontery and a corruption which can proceed only 
from a mind given over to pride or from a heart abandoned to every 
wicked desire, and perhaps to the most grasping greed and the most 
abominable lusts. The voice that speaks it is the voice of one dead 
to the strongest instincts of nature, the voice of one who sets him- 
self in opposition to his whole environment. Every tongue — the 
tongue of man, all the tongues of earth, sea, and sky — proclaim the 
glory of God. The tongue of the atheist alone emits the only dis- 
cordant note in this grand chorus of creatures hymning the praises 
of the omnipotent Creator of the Universe. " Whither shall I go 
from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy face? If J take my 
wings early in the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the 
sea, even there also shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall 
hold me " (Ps. 138). What sphere, or what land, or what depth, or 
what height shall the atheist and the scoffer inhabit to be screened 
from the face of God? Repellently and indignantly we deny the 
colossal falsehood, and confess that God exists, because, 

I. Mankind has been in possession of this truth from the begin- 
ning. Collect the votes of mankind, and the verdict will be an over- 
whelming majority in favor of God's existence — a majority so over- 
whelming from the beginning until this third year of the twentieth 
century of the modem era that the opponents will be nowhere dis- 
coverable. East, west, north, and south — wherever a human being 

26 



THERE IS NO GOD. 27 

breathes or has breathed, savage or civilized be he, every eye looks 
Godward. Every heart has throbbed with a sentiment of the In- 
finite. No matter how impoverished a language may be, it has 
always the word God. Cicero sums up the experience of all history 
anterior to his own day, and predicted infallibly the whole future 
until the end of time in this regard when he says : " There exists no 
people however barbarous which has not had the thought of God " 
(De leg. I, 24). How many countries have been explored since his 
age, and the word of the Roman philosopher remains unshaken. 
This is a fact universal and incontestable. It is an assured sign of 
truth. Hence the religious sentiment always alive is founded on rea- 
son and verity. Before advancing any other proof, let us examine, 
II. An Objection, But priests or legislators may have invented 
religion, and thus have inaugurated the idea of God. We ask, are 
heart-sentiments invented? Are instincts promulgated by law or 
exhortation? Were priests before religion? Can the existence of 
the priesthood be explained otherwise than by the preexistence of 
the religious sentiment? Does not the fact that from the very be- 
ginning legislators like Minos, Solon, Lycurgus, Numa admitted 
that religion is necessary as a foundation for social stability? Does 
not this fact prove that the religious sentiment was deeply, power- 
fully, and universally alive in souls ? Moreover, where does history 
narrate the invention of the religious idea? Again, let us demand 
from unbelievers whether all history does not mark them as isolated 
monsters in the domain of events. The pity of it! They have 
wickedly departed from their God. 



XIV.— ^bere II0 mo (5o&. 

Introduction. — This denial of a universally and admitted fact can 
not be scarified too deeply. It is ever received by the generality of 
mankind with instinctive and immediate repudiation. It is an insult 
to intelligence ; it is an insolent disclaimer of the best and highest 
thoughts and aspirations of all the ages since chaos first obeyed the 
divine summons : " Let there be light." It was first uttered, not in 
conviction, but in hatred and pride by the dragon with whom the 
archangel contended while silence held the hosts of God. It is a cry 
of rebellion — it is an echo of hell. It is impossible to fathom the 
degradation of the heart whence such an apostasy will rush to the 
lips. Scripture has put an indelible mark of infamy on this treacher- 
ous denial in the fifty-second Psalm : " The fool said in his heart : 
There is no God." Notice his heart, not his mind, spoke, and his 
heart was the heart of a fool made foolish by corruption and selfish- 
ness. It is well in this all important question to profess our faith 
in God's existence vigorously and fearlessly. Let us see what more 
is advanced against the Christian, )ts, and pagan and universal 
doctrine — ^the doctrine of all times and all peoples. 

I. An objection. Our adversaries say that this idea sprang from 
the fear which shook men in presence of the great phenomena of 
nature. We can not think this. Man's fear of God is not a mere 
physical fear; it is not the fear of the brute; but it is a fear, or 
rather, an awe, mingled with respect. Besides, men do not only 
fear God, they love Him. Can this sentiment of love spring from 
dread? Moreover, these phenomena are merely material. They 

28 



THERE IS NO GOD. 29 

beget only an impression of themselves. For example: Thunder 
might make men dread thunder — but why dread God ? What would 
make men rise from them — from a dread of them — to a fear of God ? 
Evidently man's intellect perceives some necessary relation between 
these elements in wild confusion and the author of these elements. 
The pagans converted these elements into gods and goddesses. The 
Jews, and the Christians, and unnumbered minds of antiquity soared 
beyond these entities to the infinite Being. Always, however, is 
noticeable the instinctive idea of God. 

II. That idea of God, moreover, is rooted deeply in the human soul, 
is universal, and thus can not be the offspring of fortuitous, exterior, 
and isolated causes. The cause is the nature of man created by God 
and for God. These empirical reasons for the existence of the con- 
ception of God — these assertions which endeavor to establish as a 
cause of it fear or priesthood or legislation are unphilosophical and 
baseless. One might ask why would priests or rulers make use of 
religion in order to keep nations in awe if they were not aware that 
every mind and every heart would receive an idea which their nature 
in its first impulses had already inspired. What is the faith of our 
entire humanity ? It believes in God. How did this belief come into 
tha world ? Did any preexisting law impose it ? Did it result from 
a whim — a caprice ? No ! this belief, so common, so persistent, so in- 
destructible, is a tendency which antedates reflection, which is irre- 
sistible, which is involuntary, and which has been planted in the 
soul by the author of nature. Is it within the power of the atheist 
to give as good an accounting as this of his unbelief ? 



XV.— itbcrc 1l0 IRo 6oJ>. 

Introduction. — It would seem that the further we enter upon the 
analysis of this assertion, the more it becomes apparent that it is an 
affirmation not only flagitious in its nature, but helpless and hopeless 
in its logic. No Catholic need mistrust his faith. He may fall in 
with men whose sophistries will bewilder, but let him rest assured 
that he himself is standing upon the security of truth, while his 
opponents are building upon the shifting sand of falsehood. He 
may not be able to pierce the armor of his assailant, but abiding 
with him always must be the conviction that his position is safe. 
Truth is not afraid of the light, nor of investigation. On the con- 
trary, error stands in dread of publicity. The longer truth is propa- 
gated the more brilliantly it shines. Whereas the wider the expansion 
of error, the more visible do its vagaries and contradictions become. 
Against the fundamental truth of God's existence objections are 
constantly being urged. It does no harm to meet them. 

I. Objection. — God and the other life are fables, myths. Belief 
in the existence of God is the one belief that has taken the most 
universal possession of all ages and peoples. Is it so with fables 
and myths? Where are the old mythologies? How widely they 
were spread ! How eloquently they were preached by the persuasive 
elegance of poets and orators! The sword was drawn for them, 
and the highest literature marched with them to conquest. What 
is the attitude of the human mind toward them to-day? They are 
laughed to scorn by all civilization. Is it so with the idea of the 
existence of a Supreme Being ? These myths and these fables are only 

30 



I 



THERE IS NO GOD. 31 

isolated phenomena — parasites and unwholesome fungi of diseased 
and decaying intelligences. Moreover, let it be said right here that 
these simulacra of religion make strongly for one great truth, or 
rather for one splendid fact. They all of them admitted the existence 
of gods, admitted the existence of a supreme God, " call him Jove, 
Jehova, Lord." Nay, further, hanging above even Jupiter was that 
still higher being they called Necessity, Fate. There never was a 
religion professing atheism. 

II. They object — our enemies do — ^that this universality of time 
and space which we claim for the Christian tenet suffers many and 
notable exceptions. There were in parts of the world, they say, 
sovereigns and peoples who never felt the need of a God, who never 
had a notion of religion. Were even this true, it would detract in 
nothing from our argument. It would prove only that there are 
certain families of the human race phenomenal in this regard ; whose 
condition is below the normal, who, in fact, mentally and morally 
have reached an exceptional and unparalleled degradation, who have 
lost everything human save the outward semblance. But, fortunately, 
it is not true. More thorough investigation has revealed that these 
peoples have in the main been calumniated or misunderstood. Our 
foes are hard pushed when they are driven to oppose against the 
large civilized world a handful of unknown, unintelligible and 
mumbling savages. Evidently they prefer to herd with lower 
natures and be one with them in feeling and thought, as they run the 
risk of being one with them in perversity and degradation of 
character. 



XVI.— ^bere Us mo (Bob. 

Introduction. — There is no language too scathing wherewith to 
rebuke the man who asserts that God does not exist. His position 
should entitle him to no respect. He is an eyesore in creation. His 
presence defiles humanity. He jars upon the tenderest chords of 
the human heart. He insults the human family, of which he is a 
worthless and pestilential member. He is an outcast. He has no 
community of thought with the race. He is a murderer and a liar. 
Intellectually and morally he is a leper, and undeserving of anything 
save loathing. His doctrine places him beyond the pale of com- 
miseration. He is to be left a prey to the gloom of his own thoughts, 
and were we not influenced by Christian charity, his condition in time 
and eternity would put him beyond the reach of our prayers in his 
behalf to the throne of pity, whereon sits in undiminished infinite 
mercy the great God whom he so unreasonably repudiates. He may 
doubt, he may find insufficient the proofs furnished by common sense 
and sound reason in favor of God's existence, but he ought to know 
that no atheist has as yet demonstrably proved the contrary thesis. 

There are other proofs of the Christian belief. I. " Nevertheless 
He left not himself without testimony'^ (Acts. xiv. i6). Every- 
where we find the testimony of the existence of God — in the arch- 
ing heavens, in the restless sea, in the fertile earth, in our heart beats, 
in the very dust of the road (Rom. i. 19). The visible world exists, 
therefore God exists. Whence come creatures? From themselves? 
When and how? Have we been from all eternity? If we made 
ourselves, should we not have it in our power to limit or expand our 



THERE IS NO GOD. 33 

being? Who could impede us? Would we not exist by the very 
force of our nature? Abstruse yet simple questions. If man did 
not bring himself into existence, is it reasonable to suppose that 
irrational things or inanimate objects made themselves? 

II. Not only the world exists, but there is life, activity in creation. 
This is but a repetition of the preceding argument. If there can be 
no existence without some self-existing, unproduced first being, 
neither can there be life or activity. It is worth while meditating 
upon this. It grows clearer on reflection. 

The same may be said of the order which regulates creation and 
which offers such superb testimony to the actuality of a being who 
made all these things that have their movement, number, measure, 
and weight. There have been not many, but some, objections ad- 
vanced against this process of ours. They say that all beings are 
parts of one chain, one depending on the other for existence. We 
may go from link to link forever, and need no first being as an ex- 
planation. This, of course, may be gratuitously denied. It is non- 
suited. It is thrown out of court. It is not proven. Were it proven 
that such was the condition of things, it would yet be required to 
substantiate that this chain — a line or a circle be it — came into ex- 
istence of itself. Fancy, imagination, may admit this, but not intel- 
ligence. By a reference to the palpable argument of cause and eflfect 
we will always discover wherewith to satisfy us — that not only this 
vast universe, but not even a mote in the sunbeam can produce an 
adequate explanation of the why and w^herefore of its being, except 
by conceding that God is, and in Him all things live and move and 
are. The contradictory hypothesis is as unintelligible as the develop- 
ment of an atheist. 



xvii.-ZTbere IF0 mo 60&. 

Introduction. — Again this blasphemous assertion calls for our at- 
tention. It is a pity and a calamity that this phrase has ever burdened 
human language. It is a disastrous declaration, for so many will be 
tempted to make use of it as an opiate to dull any recriminations of 
a guilty conscience. It has never been dictated by natural instinct 
or by reason. The atheists, whom history portrays to us as publicly 
manifesting their unbelief, have been proclaimed as men of high 
uprightness of life. This testimony is by no means unimpeachable. 
We know nothing of their inner life, of their thoughts, their aspira- 
tions, their desires. They were not, as far as is known, convicted 
of adultery or dishonesty. But they were guilty of insolence toward 
their fellow men, which betokens a selfish and unsavory pride. They 
were criminal in the highest degree, of treason not only to God, but 
to individual man, to the family and to the state, because they en- 
deavored to remove the primal and most effective check to all 
wickedness. If a man is led to think there is no God, no judge, no 
eternity, no heaven, no hell, what is going to restrain him when 
passions or opportunity urge ? What is going to cripple his arm when 
stretched out in greed or lust against his fellow man, society, his 
country? We imprison our anarchists for their rebellious speech, 
but what is the doctrine of anarchy compared with the propagation 
of atheism ? These men are ignorant, for God does exist. 

I. It is an admitted principle that what is implanted in every 
human breast, what is in the heart of man, in all places and all ages, 
a constant desire, a desire irresistible, points to an incontrovertible 

34 



THERE IS NO GOD. 35 

truth. Every man is impelled by the desire of happiness. This 
desire never sleeps. It is innate in the most savage breast. Nor is 
this happiness any kind of happiness. The human yearning is for 
boundless, for perfect happiness. Who has fixed this hunger ? Who 
has lodged it in universal rational nature? Clearly the author of 
that nature. It is an effect, and must have a cause. Man can not 
be its originator. It seems, therefore, to point eloquently to some being 
who planted it, some superior being. That being is responsible. 
Superior in every way to man, he must have in his possession some- 
where an efficient cause of that bliss man so pantingly thirsts for. 
There can be no perfect bliss except it be limitless. Supposing a 
limit, there would be a desire for a possible beyond, and, therefore, 
beatification would be incomplete. There is needed, therefore, an 
infinite being. An infinite being would be God. 

II. This argument, from universal desire, might be supplemented 
by a consideration of Conscience. In the voice of Conscience we 
notice two facts: Conscience forbids and Conscience threatens. It 
forbids the performance of such or such an action. In that prohibi- 
tion there is transparent the existence of a law. Not only does 
Conscience proclaim the law, but simultaneously there is heard that 
the offense will meet with retribution. The law manifested by con- 
science and the guilty knowledge that we have of our wrong doing 
are accompanied by the fear of the sanction of the law emanating 
from a legislator. Who is this legislator, this legislator that lords 
it so imperatively over every man coming into the world ? Can this 
Lawgiver, so unmistakably forcing by the process of conscience His 
power and authority over entire humanity since the beginning, can 
this Lawgiver be anything or any one save the Creator of heaven 
and earth — God ? 



XVlii.-Cbere Us mo (Bob. 

Introduction. — That the atheist is to be relegated to the last 
ranks of the race, if, indeed, he does not lose his family rights and 
descends to the level of the brute, will be conceded by the over- 
whelming majority of his fellows. Morally, his condition is, even 
with the best construction we put upon it, unenviable, and if he 
claims to be irrefutably convinced of his opinion, he is unreasonable 
beyond expression. Morally, he is guilty of apostasy of the deepest 
dye; mentally, he is guilty of a disloyalty to truth which is inex- 
cusable. It is granted that there are no theoretic atheists. Yet 
there may be men like those who lie in the beginning consciously 
and by repetition of their falsehood grow to look upon their lie 
as truth; there may be those who through bravado or blasphemy 
or despair began by speaking atheism, and have come in the end 
to believe in their vile and unpardonable assertion. Can we 
imagine a more terrible chastisement than that which God inflicts 
by withdrawing Himself from the mind as well as from the heart 
of man? Romans, chapter one, would seem to hint at precisely 
such a penalty. Man extrudes God from his mind, and God de- 
parts. Inconceivable plight! Darkness here, and hereafter, what? 
No God in time, no God in eternity! We have considered some 
of the protests made against the first truth of reason and the first 
truth of faith. Some more may be pointed out and briefly ex- 
amined. 

I. Objections. Granting that order which is so remarkably dis- 
played in creation, it is only proven thereby that the world has had 
an Architect, not a Master, but one who simply shaped and fash- 

36 



THERE IS NO GOD. 37 

ioned pre-existing material. If so, at any rate, we must admit the 
superiority of the builder to the building. Furthermore, what is 
meant by the Cosmic order? It does not imply merely the external 
appearances, accidental shapes. It goes to the very essence — it con- 
trols the entirety of the being, its forces, and its innumerable re- 
lations. This can be seen in a grain of sand, in a drop of water, 
in a blade of grass just as clearly as in the boundless ocean or 
illimitable forests, or solar systems and planets and stellar orbs 
coursing without conflict in appointed paths and through the vast 
territories of space. Whence it may be concluded that the struc- 
ture of the universe imports that, as forces flow from essences the 
architect could not rear this magnificent temple without com- 
manding essences as well as forces, and thus must be hailed not 
only as the Builder by excellence, but the Creator as well — com- 
manding the totality of every individual thing that exists. He is 
not only the Constructing Agent, but the Designer and the Creator. 
II. A second objection has been raised. Creation, it is said, 
is the producing of something out of nothing. But out of nothing, 
nothing can be made, therefore, creation is inadmissible. This 
without any hesitation may be pronounced puerile. It is an old 
protest, as old as the Epicureans. Nothing, of course, can not 
be the material cause of any existence. Though there was a period 
when all created things were nothing, there never was a period 
when God was not. God did not create out of nothing as a some* 
thing from which He produced things. He said, " Let creation be," 
and creation was. He waved the sceptre of His omnipotence over 
the empty void, and lo! the abyss teemed with beings. When 
driven in one way the atheists clamor, " There is no cause, but 
only succession ;" when driven in another, they cry, " No succes- 
sion, but only cause." 



XIX.— XTbere Us mo (Bob. 

Introduction. — The attack upon the great truth of the existence 
of God has been virulent and constant. It has been perpetrated 
by men of erudition and influence at times. They have been fol- 
lowed by a mob of shallow individuals who have endeavored to 
spread broadcast their pernicious doctrine. How have they suc- 
ceeded in their attempt? What impression have they made on 
humanity? The belief in God is an instinct of our nature. It is 
inborn. Hence with every individual and every generation the 
blasphemous warfare has to be begun all over again. Man remains 
the same. Trumpet a call to the race to rally around the standard 
of Atheism and how many will answer ? Of those who do answer, 
how many have convictions of any kind? How many wear the 
livery of spotless lives? How many persevere in their Apostasy? 
How many die with the cry, " God is not " upon their lips ? There 
is a dogma of our faith which proclaims that God is, that He is 
the Creator of the universe, that His existence is not only demon- 
strated by faith, but is, moreover, demonstrable by reason alone. 
We are obliged to believe that it is in the power of human reason 
to prove that God exists. This is a consoling doctrine. It does 
not mean that you or I can prove by reason the existence of God, 
but that the proof thereof falls within the domain of human in- 
telligence. The arguments already proposed would seem to prove 
that God is. Others may be added. 

I. It may be concluded from the many ideas or principles 
which prevail throughout humanity. There are the indisputable 
principles which control every other principle, and without which 

38 



THERE IS NO GOD. 39 

knowledge or certainty would be an impossibility. They are called 
intuitive, necessary, fundamental principles. Whence do they get 
their imperative necessity? Whence derive they that something 
which can not be gainsaid, which must be admitted by all minds? 
I might ask, Whence do they deduce the characteristics of eternity 
and irrefutability? For they are true, and they are true ever. 
From the unchangeable nature and essences of things. Whence 
do these essential properties of all things derive their immutability? 
Evidently from some immutable intelligence which is boundless 
and substantial truth, which, in other words, is God, whose nature 
is the prototype of all that is permanent and unvarying in the uni- 
verse. 

II. Let us ask whence comes the undisputable difference be- 
tween good and evil? justice and injustice? the fundamental laws 
of morality? conscience? Do they depend upon the will of man, 
upon his good pleasure, upon his caprice? The impossibility of 
this is patent. What man makes is of short duration. Conscience 
is everywhere and always. It is in man, born with him, not 
originated by him — in him in spite of his will and in spite of all 
his efforts to destroy it. Conscience tells of a law, a law connotes 
a superior. Man is not his own superior. Who is this irrepressible 
legislator, and what is this enduring law? Follow the same reason- 
ing for the ideas of justice and good and wrong and in'justice. 
Listen to Cicero (Deleg. ii. 4) : " The real and only reason of this 
law of conscience which forbids and commands is to be found in 
the incorruptible mind of the Supreme Being. God's existence may 
explain much in the world. Atheism can explain nothing in any 
order, whether the material, the intellectual, or the moral. Let us 
hope, for the sake of these defamers, that for them God's mercy 
will be above all His works." 



XX.— 6ob Can -flot »e Iknown. 

Introduction. — The last refuge of those who deny the existence 
of a Supreme Being is the proposition that it is impossible for man 
to know anything about God. So strong is the evidence in favor 
of this first great truth that, unwilling to shoulder the responsibility 
of an absolute rejection, they assert that human reason is impotent 
to discover anything about the Deity. They imply that there may 
be a God. The atheist says God is not because there is nothing 
in existence beyond matter and blind force. What this affirma- 
tion of theirs amounts to may readily be gathered. We call (or 
rather, he calls himself) the one who refuses to grant the existence 
of an infinite Creator, an Agnostic. The term explains itself. He 
builds up his belief on baseless assertions, he strengthens it by 
abstruse metaphysical discussions on being, the " infinite," re- 
lations, causes, effects, succession, or interdependence, unlimited, 
of things on each other. Their watchword is that nothing can be 
known save by experience. Here are some reasons alleged for 
their doctrine by some in the forefront of their ranks. I am an 
Agnostic, say they, 

I. Because " you Gnostics or Christians do not prove your 
assertions." This can be put down as a declaration more easily 
made than demonstrated. We do not know God and His per- 
fections with any but a small measure of adequacy because God 
is infinite, and, therefore, no finite mind can comprehend Him 
or His attributes. Is there any finite thing, any chemical sub- 

40 



GOD CAN NOT BE KNOWN. 41 

stance, say, any planet, any fixed star, any stellar system, any 
natural force which man has in centuries of scientific investigation 
and with constantly improving appliances ever thoroughly ex- 
hausted the knowledge of? How, then, can God be possessed com- 
pletely by any mental effort? But it is in our power to prove 
that He exists ; it is in our power to predicate certain perfection of 
Him. We argue from effect to a first cause, and from the fact 
that that cause is first and necessary being, we deduce its won- 
derful perfections. 

n. They are Agnostics, they say, " Because we do not 
agree among ourselves/' That there is disagreement among the 
sects is very evident. There are as many doctrines as there are 
sects. There is no unanimity among them save when they combine 
to attack the Church of Christ. However, regarding the funda- 
mental truth of which we are speaking, regarding God's existence, 
they do not differ. All (Catholics, heretics, schismatics, pagans) 
proclaim their adherence to the primal doctrine of all religion. All 
religionists, of whatever stamp, profess that there is a God, and 
that He is the beginning and end of all things, that He is the 
Creator and the Ruler of the universe. 

HI. The Agnostic furthermore protests that " even if zve proved 
our doctrine, even if we agreed on all points of doctrine, those 
tenets would be void and meaningless." To this allegation we 
reply by question only. Is there no meaning in the doctrine of 
God's existence? No meaning in His attributes, His goodness. 
His mercy. His redemption? Is there no meaning in heaven, hell, 
judgment? If these words are not impregnated with signification, 
then all language is sound and nothing more. So much vitality 



42 APOLOGETICA, 

have all these terms, so persistent are they, so intelligible do they 
make all human expression, so much faith of heart and mind goes 
into their use by the sons of men that without them the sum of 
all that is beautiful and inspiring in human speech would be lost. 
These words are what they are not because men invented them 
aimlessly, but because they were the only terms they could find to 
express the great truths they convey. 



XXL— (5o& Can 1Rot »e Itnowtt. 

Introduction. — We have always, on general principles of logic, 
the right to deny the above assertion and every kindred assertion. 
In spite of centuries of attack in which every ingenious argument 
has been put forward, and always at its full value, the efforts of 
the infidel have never culminated in proof. It will always be the 
case that atheism will be characterized by denial. The atheistic 
school is really a negative school. There is no limit to its repudi- 
ation of accepted truth. There is no truth which, under given cir- 
cumstances, it will not refuse to admit. If by admitting that two 
and two make four, they were logically compelled to profess the 
existence of God, they would deny that arithmetical fact. When 
we consider how easy one may become a victim of this pernicious 
doctrine, when we consider how easy it is to lose one's faith by 
a disregard for its moral obligations, we can not be too much on 
our g^ard. Faith is more easily lost than recovered. Yet to one 
who has gone to the guilty extreme of denying God's existence, 
and who begins to enter into himself and to behold how far he has 
wandered from the Father's house, to one upon whose tastes the 
husks fall, to one in whose breast home yearnings are awakening, 
there is a path of deliverance always open. There is prayer, there 
is reflection. As helps to meditation whence light may come and 
whereby the soul be prepared for the renewal of faith we suggest 
the following: 

In our efforts to aid them we are to trust not so much to 
science, reasoning, eloquence, as to prayer, virtue, gentleness. 

43 



44 APOLOGETICA, 

I. We must inquire what our patient admits, denies, or doubts. 
In all cases the process of enlightenment will reveal some ignorance 
and much contradiction. The infidel will grant and deny without 
stint. He is to be questioned about the meaning of the terms he 
uses, about miracle, mystery, and revelation. He must have gently 
but firmly forced upon him the weakness of the arguments advanced 
by those in whose footsteps he is walking. Nothing about the moral 
character of the leaders of incredulity is to be concealed from him. 
He is to be referred to their biographies. More than anything else, 
is the insufficiency of these men to be emphasized. What have 
they done, what can they do in the light of their principles for the 
individual, the family, the state? What have they done him? Has 
he been uplifted or plunged into depths from which he is eager 
to be rescued? Have they made him proud of himself or has he 
been deceived and humiliated? Let him be shown how their works 
are full of misrepresentation and of lies, full of calumnies against 
religion as old as the world. They have been unfair, unjust. They 
have conspired in their histories against the truth to such a de- 
gree that their pages are criminal with patent forgeries. They 
boast of freedom of thought, and yet they have been, mentally, 
slaves to error and falsehood. They have expelled light from their 
minds, and lo ! there is nothing therein but darkness. They are not 
among the best of mankind — not among the benefactors of the race. 
Had they been the leaders of humanity, how long would mankind 
have flourished? 

n. How deplorable would be man's condition without belief 
in God ! So necessary is God, that were He not, that one 
would be the truest benefactor of man who would invent God. 
Stress is to be laid on the fountains of atheism, pride, lust, moral 
corruption of any kind, bad logic; in fact, anything which con- 



GOD CAN NOT BE KNOWN. 45 

tradicts or threatens or destroys the purity and dignity of man^s 
body and mind and soul. In this wise, and with God's help, he 
may be brought to the truth. The more we reflect, the more we 
become convinced that, of all men, the atheist is the most criminal 
and the most degraded. His guilt is deicidal. To think of it ! He 
is unwilling that God should be, God all perfect, but he is satisfied 
that he, such a pygmy and so full of imperfections and limitations, 
should possess existence. 



XXIL— fiDiraclca Hre Hn HbeurMtij. 

Introduction. — This is another rallying call of infidelity. It is 
unsupported by truth, however, and is unreasonable in the last 
degree. It is a pity that there is not a counter cry ever on the lips 
of those who believe. The Christian should be as strong to pro- 
claim his doctrine as is the unbeliever. The boast of the atheist 
would not be so ubiquitous and loud were the believer as brave 
in his truth as the infidel is valorous in his lie. Our cry should be, 
" There must be a God." There must be a knowable God. Man 
is helpless without God, or, to put it in their style, man can not get 
along without God, he can not be, he can not live, he can not 
breathe, he can not think without God. He would never be were 
it not for God. It is really tiresome to have to go over and over 
again the ground that the defenders of the faith have traveled 
over and over since the beginning. It is tiresome, yet it must be 
done. Just as soon as we go behind the walls to rest, immediately 
swarms of invaders arise as if by magic, and once more the fight 
is on. To the fling of theirs against miracles our answer is that 
they are not absurd. They have been and they are every day. 

I. A miracle is not an impossibility. Miracles are denied by 
those who refuse to admit the existence of God. That they are 
possible is also rejected by those who believe in God but reject 
any interference on the part of the Deity in the aflfairs of creation. 
All they allege against the miracle is but a tissue of statements 
without demonstration. We might answer them by stating that 
miracles are possible, because they have occurred. Apply the his- 

46 



MIRACLES ARE AN ABSURDITY. 47 

torical test to any of the stupendous happenings of Christianity — ^to 
the resurrection of Christ, let us say. Is there anything more 
luminously attested in the annals of the world? But the enemies 
of faith say No ; there was never a resurrection from the dead, be^. 
cause a miracle is an absurdity; that is, something which should 
neither be spoken of nor listened to by any one claiming to be a 
reasonable being. What is a miracle? It is an event which can 
not be brought about by any process of nature, nor by the action 
of man, or of angels, good or bad. It is just the fact that no natural 
agent can perform it that makes it possible. We have to ascribe 
it to God, to whom all things are possible. God can not change 
the law of nature. Were He to wish to do so. He could. But the 
miracle does not suppose a change in the laws of nature — those so 
vaunted laws of nature about which scientists know so little — it 
merely supposes that the action of such or such an agent is for the 
time suspended. Witness the security of the youths in the fiery 
furnace. Has not the Deity the same privileges as are granted to 
any other framer of laws? To what does he, who rejects the pos- 
sibility of the miracle, reduce the great Creator of the universe? 
To the position of a grand inert Lama in an Asiatic temple. 

II. Miracles are probable. There is a law of nature, but there 
is a law of humanity, of love, of providence. Man is to be looked 
after. There are emotions of his being which must be respected. 
If there are no such things possible as miracles, then let man never 
lift up his eyes heavenward, let him never fall on his knees in 
prayer before God. Let him address himself to the laws of nature. 
I might say, what is the use (pardon the expression) of God if He 
can not perform miracles? When there is question of propagating 
religion the people preached to ask for some wonder, that is, they 
asked for miracle. The demand for miracles is ubiquitous. The 



48 APOLOGETICA. 

farmer asks for rain. The mariner asks for the calming of the 
tempest. Says St. Thomas equivalently (Contr. Gent. iii. 96) : 
" All heard prayers are not miracles, but many miracles are heard 
prayers." We may go a step further and say not only is the 
miracle possible, not only is it possible, but it is certain. Consult 
history. 



XXIII.— fiDiracIee are llncre&ible* 

Introduction. — This means that no mind which respects itself 
can admit miracles. Of this something has been said already. The 
warfare against God which has been going on since the beginning 
may take different aspects, but the difference is superficial only. The 
conflict is waged against God. It has for its aim the extinction in 
every mind of all thoughts of God ; in every heart of all aspiration 
toward Him, in all the energy of mankind of every deed which 
directly or indirectly may acknowledge His existence or His suprem- 
acy. The campaign proceeds directly by repudiating His being, 
indirectly by limiting or by affecting to misunderstand His infinite 
perfection. Take away or diminish in any manner His attributes, 
and the logical inference is that He is not. We must grant Him 
infinity in every relation, we must grant Him power, knowledge, 
goodness, justice, mercy without bounds; otherwise He ceases to 
be God. Something has already been hinted about miracles, but 
a few more ideas will usefully find place herein, and, moreover, what 
we advance about His power may be advanced concerning His 
knowledge, concerning, in fact, any of His perfections. Again we 
profess that in the light of reason we can not consistently, a priori, 
reject miracles. 

I. Miracles are Credible because they are Possible. — It is to be 
remembered that a miracle is an effect which only God can produce. 
If there be effects which in themselves seem producible by a finite 

49 



50 APOLOGETICA. 

cause, there is something in the method of their production which 
can be ascribed to God only. If miracles are impossible, it is be- 
cause God is not omnipotent. To deny infinite power to God is to 
deny His infinite nature — it is to hem Him in with obstacles or 
limits. He can not be hemmed in by His own nature, which is 
boundless. He can not be impeded by one above Him. No one is 
above Him. Certainly He can not be shackled by any one beneath 
Him. If He can not produce an effect beyond the forces of nature, 
beyond the entire forces of entire nature, if He can not suspend 
the laws of nature, if He can not act against those laws, it is because 
He is dependent upon those laws. This idea must be rejected, for 
He is the framer of these laws, and they are His to dispense with as 
He deems fit. Grant that some hitherto undreamed of miracle were 
performed, an occurrence divinely ordered whereby a change would 
be introduced into the order of things, we ask, Is the present the only 
order possible? We ask. Is not God Master, and is it not in His 
power to change even the very order of things, and while so doing, 
counteract all evil consequences ? Moreover, what we understand as 
evil consequences may in some higher plane be harmony ineffable. 

II. A God who reveals truth must mark His revelation, which 
is His official declaration to His creation, with some unmistakable 
stamp. The seal which will gain universal credence more easily 
is the miracle of deed or the miracle of word which we call prophecy, 
and which is the certain announcement of a fact to take place in 
the future, a fact which can not naturally be known in the present. 
It is a prediction, not a guess, not a conjecture. It is in the order 
of miracles and generally communicates supernatural facts. It is 
not made at random. It is always solemn. It is evident that 
prophecy proceeds from the spirit of God only. It can be ascribed 



MIRACLES ARE INCREDIBLE. 51 

to Him only who possesses the whole domain of truth. In all 
times and among all peoples prophecy has been considered as a 
communication from the Holy Spirit, and is an infallible mark of 
the intervention of the Deity. Miracle and prophecy are both within 
the perfection of God — for He is all powerful and He knows all 
things. 



XXIV.— nDi20terie0 are 'lUnwortbi? of tbe 
Ibuman flDinb* 

Introduction. — This assertion is at the bottom of all the assertions 
against revealed truth, because fundamentally in the intellectual 
order, man's pride is hurt, for that he can not understand and hence, 
in his unreasonable indignation, he does not blame his own finiteness, 
but the vast cycle of verity which lies beyond his comprehension. 
There should be no mysteries for him. Everything should float 
within his mental ken and nothing should be outside the grasp of his 
intelligence. It is the drop of water that clamors to be a sea. It 
is the glow worm which wishes to be a star. Still, more deep yet, is 
the reason that he wishes to find some excuse for wandering at his 
own free will among forbidden pastures. Give me something that 
I can understand, and I will surrender. This is his protest, flat, un- 
profitable, stale. Very little consolation in this attitude. The proper 
disposition of the human mind is merely to accept without under- 
standing what is proposed by an infinite intelligence through an 
infallible teacher. 

I. What is a mystery? It is a supernatural truth or fact. It 
can neither be understood nor disproved by human reason. It con- 
tradicts no law of the understanding. Even the German rationalist, 
Goethe, insists that the intelligence of man and the intelligence of 
God are two very different things. To deny the possibility of the 
mystery, to deny that mystery exists, is to elevate the limited mind 
of man to a level with the boundless mind of God. To deny that 
God can reveal a mystery is to deny conscious life and free will to 

52 



MYSTERIES UNWORTHY OF HUMAN MIND. 53 

the Divinity. Man can not arrive at a clear and adequate idea of 
the essence of God and of His attributes. How many varieties, 
therefore, in the very being of God which, soar as he may, he can not 
find? These are the mysteries. Without revelation there are facts 
and truths which man would never think of, much less understand. 
'It must never be forgotten that man only perceives truth, and so, 
since the expanse of truth is limitless, since God is substantial 
truth, mystery is not only a possibility but an actuality, a necessity, 
n. There are mysteries everywhere, and we admit them. Has 
the naturalist penetrated the intimate nature of any body? How 
much is known about forces? About life? About death? We 
may know the mechanism of a watch, because man has made it. 
Man may dissect a corpse — can he revive it? There is mystery in 
the grain of sand on the ocean's margin, mystery in the drop of 
water, in the flower, in the tree, in the small insect, in the largest 
animal, in man. No man possesses complete knowledge of any one 
thing. The scientist has imprisoned light and electricity; does he 
adequately comprehend a ray of the one or a spark of the other? 
Does he understand the human eye, the human soul? The atheist 
denies God because he can not understand the existence of a being 
eternal and everywhere present, but is not a universe without a God 
an enigma still more inexplicable? The Pantheist denies creation 
because he can not conceive of a world coming from nothing, but 
is it not as difficult to believe in the world as an emanation from God 
as a finite being infinite? So it is for the professions that reject 
mystery. They refuse to admit one mysterious truth, and they 
throw themselves into the arms of a thousand incomprehensibilities. 
There is no contradiction implied in the mystery. In the Trinity 
there would be an absurdity were we called upon to admit the ex- 
istence of one God and of three Gods. No! Revealed mysteries 



54 APOLOGETICA. 

are the landmarks of truth. They keep the human mind within 
bounds. In their Hght — if I may use the word while speaking of 
mysteries — the human mind will be prevented from going astray 
in its conclusions. Moreover, they dignify man's intelligence. No 
humiliation in bowing down to them in willing surrender. On the 
contrary, one bends to a royal Master, and one rises ennobled, and 
with the light that illumineth upon one. 



XXV.— (Bob 2)oe0 mot Care for tbe Morl^ 

Introduction. — Theism and Deism are radically the same words, 
but there may be a distinction drawn between them. Theists, as 
we are at liberty to conclude from their writings, maintain the ex- 
istence of a Deity who governs all things by the constant exercise 
of His beneficent power; Deists admit the existence of a God who 
created all things, but affirm that, having laid down immutable laws 
for their government. He does not further interfere. The declaration 
that God does not care for the world implies that it is of no service 
whatever to refer to the great Ruler ; that His solicitude ceased with 
the termination of His creative act, and that men and women are 
mere crawling things on the surface of His footstool, and whether 
they come or go, live or die, are happy or unhappy, is a matter of 
complete indifference to Him. It is hard to conceive anything 
more blasphemous than this. It is cruel to man, it is unjust to God. 
As well might God not be as to show no concern for His creatures. 
It is simply a denial of Providence. 

I. What is Providence f It is forethought on the part of God. 
It expresses His never ceasing power exerted in and over all His 
works. It is the opposite of " chance," " fortune," " luck." We may 
call it a continuance of creation. In relation to all things it is uni- 
versal, and nothing is too minute for its regard. For moral beings 
it is special. Each object is watched over by Providence according 
to its capacity. God's providence is concerned in a sparrow's fall. 

55 



56 APOLOGETICA. 

His children are of more value than many sparrows, and so are 
assured of His providential care in all their concerns. Its acts are 
threefold : preservation, cooperation, and government. He controls 
all things for the highest good of the whole, acting upon every 
species according to its nature; inanimate things by physical in- 
fluences, brutes by instinct and free agents, according to the laws of 
free agency. Providence displays God's omnipresence, holiness, jus- 
tice, benevolence. If the telescope reveals the immense magnitude 
and countless hosts of worlds which He created and sustains, the 
microscope shows that His providence equally concerns itself with 
the minutest animalcule. Nothing is really small with God. He hangs 
the most momentous weights on little wires. We have quoted from 
a non-Catholic source (Fausset) because it describes clearly the 
philosophical notion of providence, and without a proper under- 
standing of the same it is impossible to explain satisfactorily to our- 
selves the objections which in the eyes of many militate against this 
wonderful and adorable attribute of the Divinity. In favor of provi- 
dence we may advance general proofs. 

II. There must he a Providence, God must have a care for His 
world. What would the absence of providence argue in the Deity? 
It would accuse the Supreme Being of cruelty. It would imply that 
the material and animal worlds are dearer to Him than the world 
of man. For it is chiefly that God does not take care of man which 
originates this implied censure of God's providence. It would mean 
that God's attributes of omniscience (which has been called the eye 
of providence), of mercy, and justice are nothing but limited vision, 
pitilessness, injustice. It would deny His power, His wisdom. His 
holiness. In a general way it would reduce the God of the universe 
to a blind, feelingless entity. It would afford an excuse for man to 



GOD DOES NOT CARE FOR THE WORLD. 57 

listen to every voice of passion and make him curse the day he came 
into existence. There is no crime w^hich would not follow in the 
wake of this misconception of divine providence. This is only a 
general argument. Yet, general as it is, it forces conviction. It 
drives us to the dilemma, either God is provident or He does not 
exist at all. 



XXVL— (5ob Docs mot eare for tbc Morlb. 

Introduction. — Probably there is no cry goes up to heaven so fre- 
quently as this cry of the discontented. The world is largely made 
up of the discontented. They are found in every situation of ex- 
istence. They are not confined to the poor and suffering alone. 
The clamor of discontent frequently rises from the hearts of the 
well and the prosperous. Here we have a proof that perfect happi- 
ness is not found here below. It is evidence that nothing on this 
earth can make a man supremely happy. It is well to understand 
that flawless happiness is not of this world. Man may be contented 
here always; happy, in the true sense of the word, never. Man is 
not made for this world. Man is made for God, and until he obtains 
possession of God his heart-hunger will never be appeased. It is 
the losing sight of this great truth which makes man dissatisfied, 
begets misunderstanding and fills this world with unreasonable re- 
criminations against Providence. As soon as man realizes this 
important verity, he will begin to understand, in some small degree, 
at least, the ways of God in His dealings with man. Man complains 
of the physical evils which he encounters on his journey through 
life, but 

I. Physical evils are no arguments against providence. By 
physical ills we understand the calamities which visit mankind. We 
understand the three great evils of the world, war, pestilence, famme, 
and everything which follows in their wake. This is why, according 
to Lactantius 1. c. c. 13, epicures denied that the Deity exercised 
providence toward His creatures. Says St. Augustine, " We refrain 
from censuring the workman in his workshop, but we are not afraid 

58 



GOD DOES NOT CARE FOR TEIE WORLD. 59 

to blame God in his world." An unskilled man entering a workshop 
sees many tools of which he does not understand the nature and the 
use. Perhaps he may even go to the extreme of considering them 
as superfluous. In handling them he may wound himself; then he 
cries out against them as harmful. So in the world, says the same 
doctor, men reprehend God, the creator and the administrator of all 
things, because they liehold causes in action, causes of the nature 
and tendency of which they have not the slightest knowledge. Man, 
hence, instead of censuring, should profess his ignorance, and wonder 
and adore. ^lan, in presence of physical evils, should remember that 
a careful ruler must look out for the general good ; should remem- 
ber that in all things care for the universal weal must at times bring 
about private inconvenience and damage. Man should not forget 
that the perfection of the universe calls for veracity. He should 
not forget that what displeases him may bring pleasure to others. 
Therefore, unless he wishes to lay himself open to being considered 
ignorant and selfish, he must remain silent in presence of the hap- 
penings in the universe. 

II. Faith proves that there is a providence, and that God does 
take care of the world. When we open the eyes of our faith, provi- 
dence is immediately vindicated. Our faith teaches us that all 
these evils are consequences of man's first disobedience, and hence 
are to be ascribed not to God, but to our first parents. They may 
reasonably be considered as the penalty of actual transgression. They 
are, besides, the occasion of satisfying and of meriting. They are, 
moreover, a wholesome stimulus in the formation of character, and 
they keep our hearts uplifted toward that home for which we are 
all destined. These considerations are based upon faith, but they 
are also built up on that great primal prevarication which, while it 
is a religious dogma, is at the same time a fact historically attested. 



xxviL— (Bob Doe0 mot Care for tbc Morlb. 

Introduction. — This libel on the perfections of the Divinity is an 
emanation rather from a morbid disposition than from a well 
balanced mind. Even among the pagans, whose conception of God 
were so blurred by egotism and prejudice, were found philosophers 
who, following the dictates of reason alone, argued wisely and con- 
vincingly in favor of the important fact that God does not abandon 
His creatures. They listened to and they were, familiar with the 
complaints of querulous, shortsighted men; they heard the clamors 
that incessantly rose about them — clamors accusing the Deity of 
partiality and unwisdom in dealing with the human race. On all 
sides their ears were assailed by the cry that the wicked prospered 
while the good were plunged into the depths of all sorts of ad- 
versity. We may hear the ululations of David, " My steps had well 
nigh slipped . . . seeing the prosperity of the wicked" (Ps. 
Ixxii. 2), and of Job, " Why, then, do the wicked live, are they ad- 
vanced and strengthened with riches?" (Job xxi. 7) ; and of Jere- 
miah, " Why is it well with all of them that transgress and do 
wickedly?" (Jer. xii. i). This is one form which the allegations 
against Providence take. 

I. But there is a Providence. These reproaches are exaggerated, 
for not all the wicked abound in the things of this world, nor are 
all the deserving deprived of them. Besides, there is no account 
taken of the other good things which the virtuous enjoy. Reputa- 
tion, for example, health, worthy children, peace of mind, and 

60 



GOD DOES NOT CARE FOR THE WORLD. 6i 

resignation. These things are more than compensation. Again, 
evil doers are not happy. They alone know the mental tortures 
which are theirs — remorse, fear, suspicion, envy, jealousy, and the 
like, so many spectres that render unbearable the banquet of de- 
lights which seems to be their share. Moreover, none of these ex- 
ceptions taken against Providence are of any weight save to those 
who believe ( ?) that the grave is the end of the whole man, that 
consciousness extinct on this side is not reawakened beyond. But 
for those who know that there is perfect felicity for them some- 
where, though not in this world, all the calamities of existence are 
as nothing. To quote St. Augustine : " These ills are profitable, 
when piously borne. They diminish wrong doing, they try virtue, 
they demonstrate the vanity of existence, and they awaken a desire 
for the quick coming of that kingdom wherein alone beatitude is real 
and perpetual." 

II. Our authoritative teachers explain the reason or advance the 
reasons of this inequality of distribution in the matter of the good 
things of earth. St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei): "Were God to 
punish now all manifest sins, nothing would be reserved for the 
last judgment. If He punished no sin here. His providence would 
be discredited." So in things of secondary importance. If God 
did not bestow them on some abundantly, we might be inclined to 
say that He was not Master of them. Likewise, if He gave to all 
who asked, we might conclude that He was to be obeyed simply 
on account of these gifts — an idea which, instead of rendering us 
pious servants, would fill us with cupidity and avarice. It is to 
be kept in mind that the verdict of the holy fathers in matters of 
religious truth was not based upon revelation only. They were 
men who met and faced honestly all the difficulties which the op- 



62 APOLOGETICA. 

ponents of religion brought to bear against truth. Hence they 
answered as the occasion demanded. They met revelation with 
revelation, authority with authority, Scripture with Scripture, and 
reason with reason. When we quote them here we quote them for 
the value of the reasons they furnish forth. 



XXVIIL— (Bob Doee mot Care for 1bi0 Morlb* 

Introduction. — In dealing with the Creator in His acts toward 
mankind there are two facts which should not be lost sight of. 
These two facts are the free will of God and the free will of His 
rational creatures. The Lord is Master, and His sway supreme. 
Whatever He wills we must submit to without repining. This 
resignation is demanded of us by the very nature of the revelation 
which exists between Him and us. His reason for all His opera- 
tions lies in this one assertion of His, " I am the Lord, thy God." 
Sometimes we may be able to understand the why and the wherefore 
of His performances. Sometimes they are too deep for our fathom- 
ing. In either case ours only to listen and follow. Besides the free 
will of the Deity and His power over all the works of His hands, 
there is a negative attitude of God in the affairs of the race. He 
does not will. He concurs physically, it is true, but He simply 
does not check. He permits. This brings us to the second fact 
that many occurrences are attributable only indirectly to God and 
directly to man. Yet is the providence of God so manifest that out 
of evil He produces good. 

I. The holy fathers are strenuous advocates of God's providence. 
The reasons advanced by St. John Chrysostom for the unequal dis- 
tribution of temporal benefits are cogent. He affects the saints, lest 
they be puffed up ; that they may not have an overweening opinion 
of themselves; that others may not esteem them too highly; that 

63 



64 APOLOGETICA. 

the power of God may be evidenced in their regard; and that their 
labors for the salvation of others may be more fruitful. The just 
suffer in order that their patience may shine in a dark world, that 
their thoughts and the thoughts of others may be lifted up beyond 
this sphere, in order that their mode of life may run in ordinary 
grooves, and that this example may not be pitched too high for 
others to follow. 

Let us add to these reasons, which certainly go far toward proving 
that in all that God does or allows He is exercising a care over 
the members of the human family, let us add that even if we look 
at suffering in the light of punishment and at prosperity in the 
light of reward, it is, nevertheless, true that no one is so utterly 
abandoned that he has never done a good deed, and no one so per- 
fect as never to have been guilty of some transgression. God is so 
just that He never forgets to reward, as He never is unmindful 
of the sanction which attaches to all His laws. 

n. History vindicates providence. That masterpiece of all time, 
'*' The City of God," by St. Augustine, and all the philosophers of 
history written in a fair spirit, make clear to all who read the in- 
tervention for good of God in the affairs of the world. Looking 
upon Scripture as the authenticated chronicle which it is, we find 
that the histories of Israel and of Gentile nations show that right- 
eousness exalteth a nation. The preparations made for the coming 
of Christ, the distinct prophecies, the saving of the sacred Scrip- 
tures, the fate of the Roman Empire, the multiplication and dis- 
persion of the Jews, all the many events narrated of private indi- 
viduals or nations in the Bible — all this and more makes us realize 
that the very hairs of our head are numbered, that not one is for- 
gotten among countless multitudes, that God upholdeth all things 



GOD CARES NOT FOR HIS WORLD. 65 

by the word of His power, that by Him all things consist, and that 
the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men. There are mysteries 
undoubtedly connected with special acts of divine providence. It 
must be so, for His providence, like all His attributes, is infinite. We 
may trust God, for 

"All discord (is) harmony not understood, 
All partial evil (is) universal good." 



XXIX.— (Bob Cares IRot for Ibis Morl&. 

Introduction. — The more we study the affairs of Hfe in connection 
with the Creator, the more we become convinced that the Lord 
is not a meddler, but a guardian. He meddles not, because He re- 
spects the great gift He has bestowed upon His creatures, the great 
gift of free will. He has not made men automata. He has endowed 
them with the liberty of action. He created them without consult- 
ing them; but once created. He leaves them to work their way un- 
hampered toward the glorious end for which He gave them being. 
We have, therefore, to take into consideration the end of creation. 
Providence implies practically an act of intelligence which grasps 
the ends and the means thereunto, and involves an act of the will 
which approves of those means and decrees that the end must be 
attained. We may call the execution of this decree God's governance 
of the world. This providence divine has been attacked in divers 
ways. Among its opponents, besides materialists and epicureans, 
evolutionists of the Darwin and Spencer type are found. Against 
them we may file this proposition: 

I. God protects all His creatures, and in a special way man, by 
His ineffable providence, and leads and helps them toward their 
destiny. He can do so because He is infinitely powerful. He 
must do so because He is all wise. He does and will do so because 
He is boundless goodness. His power controls all things. His 
wisdom directs all things. His goodness safeguards all things, and 
through it His will is sincere in its determination to consummate 
all things according to the end prescribed by their nature. As man 
is the most precious of His creatures, it goes without saying that 

66 



GOD CARES NOT FOR HIS WORLD, 67 

over him He exercises a special watchfulness. It really matters not 
what happens to man, provided within his reach are placed the 
means to help him toward the purpose for which he has been given 
existence. Man by unaided reason is able to discover that God 
exists, that his soul is to endure beyond this life, that by the pos- 
session of God alone will he be made happy, that this beatitude will 
consist in knowing, praising, and loving God, that God can be pos- 
sessed only by those who love Him in this life and exhibit that love 
by observing the natural law according to their lights, by observ- 
ing also other laws which are known to have been promulgated 
directly or indirectly by Heaven, and by migrating from this world 
in a state of friendship with the Creator. 

n. That God supplies these means in suiHciency is beyond all 
question. It is a conclusion deducible from the most superficial 
consideration of the divine perfections. Some of these means are 
furnished by all created things, all of which are placed in this world 
as helps to man. Where revelation is unknown, God will grant this 
sufficience either by external assistance or, if necessary, by illuming 
the intelligence and moving thereby the will. What man in this 
regard is unable to acquire the knowledge of by himself he is gen- 
erally in a position to learn of others. Even by the very calamities 
which enter into his experience, and which tempt him at times to 
blame Providence, even by these may he be enabled to read the 
happy consummation for which he is intended. In the eternities 
it will be part of our enlightenment to understand that the very oc- 
currences which made us most inclined to doubt God's providence 
were the very happenings that vindicated God's love for us and the 
securest means of putting it in our power to achieve a glorious im- 
mortality. " Although he should kill me, I will trust in him " (Job 
xiii. 15). 



XXX.— (Bob Ibae IRo Care for Ibis Morlb. 

Introduction. — The clamor that God is an improvident Master is 
louder and more frequent than any other against the Deity. The 
accusation is far-reaching and assumes divers forms. He does not 
exist, it is said, or, if He does. He shows no concern in the affairs 
of His world. This is, they urge, true not only in matters temporal, 
but in spiritual as well. Some men are more highly favored than 
others, even where there is question of the interests of men's souls. 
Salvation, they allege, is not within the reach of all. There are men, 
and not a few, who pass through life without a single chance of sav- 
ing their souls being offered them. This is a calumny and a blas- 
phemy. Moreover, it directly antagonizes the perfections as well as 
the existence of God. We must concede in the first place that, 

I. Cod sincerely wishes the salvation of all men. The contra- 
dictory of this thesis has been held by Calvinists and Jansenists. The 
Church, through the Council of Trent, utters this doctrine : " If any 
one affirms that the grace of justification is granted to the predestined 
only, and that the rest of mankind are called but receive no grace 
because they are predestined to evil " (A. S.). Without opening the 
door which leads to the thorny mazes of the mystery of predestination, 
our reason compels us to admit that God is infinitely good and in- 
finitely powerful, that He wishes all to be saved, that He gives all the 
means, and that it is within the domain of His omnipotence and good- 
ness to desire and to be able to do this. There is only one obstacle 
which prevents the effect of His assistance, and that obstacle is the 
impediment which is opposed to the divine action by the free will of 

6Z 



GOD HAS NO CARE FOR HIS WORLD. 69 

man. From the consideration of the goodness of God and of His 
justice, we are justified in concluding that no man who has reached 
the age of reason will, in the moment of judgment, be able to excuse 
himself for his misdemeanors and his plight with the plea that he 
never had the wherewithal to act diflFerently in life. God could not 
condemn a man truthfully putting forth such justification of his 
conduct. 

II. God amply provides for man*s eternal welfare. This can not 
be denied in its application to those who are the disciples of Christ. 
" And this is the will of my Father that sent me : that every one who 
seeth the Son and believeth in him may have life everlasting " (John 
vi. 40) . " For God so loved the world as to give his only begotten 
Son" (John iii. 16). There can be no doubt, therefore, of God's 
earnest will to save all those who believe in His Son and abide by 
His teachings. That God sincerely desired the salvation of the Jews 
is expressed by the words of Christ (Matt, xxiii. 37) : "Jerusalem, 
Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are 
sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered together thy chil- 
dren, as the hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and thou 
wouldst not ? " This plaint of the Saviour, and the wonderful de- 
liverance of the Jews from bondage, and the long line of prophets 
appealing through doctrine and miracle — all this proves luminously 
God's paternal watchfulness over the chosen people. That over them 
yet, and over all other divisions of the human family, the same 
fatherly care is extended, not so largely, but always sufficiently, will 
be apparent, from later considerations. The little that has been said 
makes it evident that it is impossible in any rational conception of the 
Deity to exclude providential action over all beings in all things, and 
especially in things that appertain to the welfare of immortal souls. 
Let us bear in mind two things. If ever a man is lost, he is lost 



70 APOLOGETICA. 

through his own fault. Deliberately he has wrought his own un- 
doing. " And thou wouldst not/' said Our Lord, speaking of the 
Jews' rejection of His mission. God, the Supreme Judge, will be 
within the right of His justice to say to every condemned man, 
" And thou wouldst not." Besides, what have those who assert that 
God's providence does not stretch itself over every adult soul to 
base their claim upon? The consummation of divine justice is be- 
yond the grave. No traveler has returned to tell mankind the story. 
The " Beyond " is luminous in itself, but not to us sojourners. I 
know not what man has been condemned. The salvation of any 
individual or his reprobation is outside of the horizons which limit 
my vision. I know what each one must do to reach eternal happi- 
ness. Here I will never know whether after death he has met with 
failure or success. Of all who have gone to God, I can not affirm of 
a single one that he is lost. A consoling truth this, but awful is the 
fact that out of that innumerable multitude I am only sure that the 
canonized saints are in the halls of the blessed. As a corrective of 
this uncertainty I have the certainty that God's mercy is above all His 
works. 



XXXI. -(Bob Ibas IRo dare for Ibis Morlb. 

Introduction. — The fountain of all spiritual evil, yea, and in a 
measure, of much physical evil, is the free will of the creature. In 
other words, man, not God, is to blame for all the immorality (we 
use this term according to its primitive meaning) existing among 
men. Immorality in its first sense signifies thoughts, words, and 
actions which are vicious, which are contrary to natural law and 
order. In the material order many of the happenings which are 
characterized as injurious, as impending physical comfort and wel- 
fare, might be traced to culpable negligence, and, therefore, are to 
be imputed to the voluntary agency of man. That God wishes the 
spiritual weal of the race is outside of all cavil. What we must 
always reckon with is man's cooperation or want of cooperation. 
It is a leading and established truth in ethics that though God's pur- 
pose, or rather will, in the question here submitted is genuine, real, 
sincere, yet it is not absolute; it is conditioned. God, by the very 
nature of things, wills man to be saved, only provided he surrenders 
to the divine assistance, which theologians call grace, and provided, 
that is, that he makes use of the helps proffered, and thus perseveres 
in rectitude. This is the correct statement of the nature of the 
" Salvific " will of God. Of course, there are : 

I. Objections. God is the cause of moral evil. T© this statement 
we make answer by asking. In what way is He the cause? Is He 
directly or indirectly the cause? If we are told that He is directly 
the cause of sin, then God, who is substantial and infinite perfection, 
acts contrary to His nature, which supposition is absurd, because it 

71 



72 APOLOGETICA. 

involves a contradiction, and blasphemous, because it pushes irrever- 
ence against the divine attributes to the pitch of impious abuse. Sin 
proceeds directly from the will of the sinner. That God gave man 
his free will does not make human transgressions imputable to the 
Divinity. Did moral evil spring from a blind instinct, then we would 
be compelled in reason to hold the author of that irresistible inclina- 
tion responsible for it. Surely we are not willing to go to the length of 
demanding that the Creator should not have endowed His highest 
handiwork with a power as fruitful in good as in wrong doing. If I 
am deprived of my will in its native integrity, then perforce must I 
lose my reason. Without reason and free will, what would I be? 
A mere animal — an automaton. Praised be our Maker, who loved us 
more wisely and better than that ! God wishes the existence of the 
will, but moral evil proceeds therefrom, not necessarily, but from the 
deliberate misuse of freedom. Evil acts happen independently of 
God's will. They are not, can not be intended by God. But, 

II. God does not prevent sin. This involves the previous objection. 
It is identical. It is framed differently. It is not repugnant to the 
divine attributes that, in this way, in the way we have just explained, 
there be actions which are wrong. God's purpose in bestowing 
freedom of action upon man is of the highest and in thorough har- 
mony with His ineffable perfections. That purpose was eternal happi- 
ness for man and glory for Himself. Man free, and only as free, has 
it within his power to practise virtue, to keep in the strait path, 
to exercise heroic deeds, to master himself, to live the only life 
worth living, to go through this existence unspotted, and thereby 
glorify his Creator and enjoy consummate bliss. Furthermore, even 
out of sin may glory ascend to God. God by pardoning sin manifests 
the glory of His mercy ; by punishing sin, manifests the glory of His 
justice ; by forbidding sin, manifests the splendor of His sanctity. 



XXXII.— (Bob leycrciscs flo provibencc ®vcr 
Ibis movli). 

Introduction. — The Church of Christ has made many enemies for 
itself. They are of such a stripe that their hostility is an honor 
rather than a reproach. We love Mother Church for the enemies 
she has made. She brings to men doctrines which by their very 
nature call for the exercise of duty under circumstances which do 
not pamper, but are repugnant to human nature. The entire round 
of Christian obligations is summed up in the words of St. Paul: 
" For the grace of God our Saviour hath appeared to all men, 
instructing us that, denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we 
should live soberly, and justly, and piously" (Titus ii. ii, 12). 
Adhesion to the faith demands submission both of mind and will. 
This surrender implies so much self-repression that man revolts, and 
his rebellion is not against himself, but against his divinely appointed 
teacher. Hence fault-finding. Hence accusations and calumnies and 
attacks against doctrine. Hence every truth promulgated finds an 
opponent. Infidelity has its birth not in the highest, but in the lowest 
levels of man's being. Divine providence in one way or another is 
perhaps the chief target of our adversaries. 

I. God does exercise a providence over men in all things and over 
spiritual concerns in a special manner. Providence is inseparable 
from Deity. Yet we are asked how is it that if the Church be the one 
teacher of mankind, how is it that its voice has not been heard by all ? 
How is it so many have never known the Church, in fact, could 

73 



74 APOLOGETICA. 

never have known the Church? This question states an incontro- 
vertible fact. Yet the fact does not militate against providence, nor 
against any of its attributes. It would undoubtedly be an unanswer- 
able objection were men so circumstanced in the impossibility of sav- 
ing their souls. But they are not. There is no damnation where 
there is no fault, and there is no fault where the liberty and the 
power of acting do not exist. The individuals referred to had no 
chance of having the Gospel preached to them. Their paganism 
may not be voluntary, and hence the sin of ignorance of God and 
of idolatry could not be imputed to them. They will not be lost for 
not having heard the Gospel. So the Church condemned the proposi- 
tion of Bains, who asserted that " negative infidelity in those to whom 
Christ has not been preached is a sin." Who the more liberal, the 
Church or the heretic? We must pause here to praise the Church, 
which has never ceased to protect the rights of reason and humanity. 

II. We are forced to conclude that God must have in all times 
and places delivered to all men the means to escape perdition. At all 
times, we say, and in all places, and to all men from the beginning 
of the world. This we know in general. How the means of salva- 
tion were afforded in all cases we do not pretend to know. Suffice 
it for us to have the certainty that the Lord has looked after the 
eternal interests of man since the beginning, and that every man has 
been judged by his lights, and rewarded or punished accordingly. 
God has promulgated two laws — one written, the other unwritten, 
or, better, the other pencilled on the heart of every man. This latter 
is known to every rational being. It is called the natural law. It is 
the reflection of the divine law in the mind of man. It is immutable. 
Its general precepts or dictates are known to each individual, and in 
this respect no man can plead invincible ignorance. There has been 



NO PROVIDENCE OVER WORLD, 75 

no member of the human family, and there never will be one, into 
whose intelligence some shining of this law has not entered. Accord- 
ing to this law and according to the measure of their knowledge of 
this law will the men be judged to whom Christ has never been 
preached. With this explanation even the simplest may understand 
that God's providence is as ubiquitous as His presence. 



XXXIIL— (5o& Us IflnsoUcitous fov Souls. 

Introduction. — The Catholic Church, as the accredited teacher in 
matters of faith and morals, besides being thoroughly equipped for 
her mission, possesses all the qualifications and is endowed with all 
the characteristics which are essential to such teachership. Like the 
truth which she delivers and protects, her pronouncements are clear, 
unhesitating and consistent. Consistency is her jewel. She shrinks 
from no legitimate consequence of her averments. She stands by all 
logical inferences deducible from her dogmas. This is noticeable 
always, and not least in the matter before us. Advocating the exist- 
ence of a God, of whom we affirm a benign and impartial providence, 
we assert that to every man God furnishes a chance of salvation. 
Including within the zone of that providence even those to whom the 
God of the Christians has never been preached, we are immediately 
and almost triumphantly met by the objection : " But according to the 
Church there is no salvation without Baptism, a sacrament which 
most assuredly is out of the question with regard to peoples who have 
never heard of Christ or his Church/* They consider this a dilemma 
on one or other horn of which the propounder of Catholic doctrine 
must find himself impaled. Let us listen to the explanation of the 
Church. 

I. Baptism is necessary for salvation. When we say that Baptism 
is necessary, we mean that it is an indispensable means to salvation. 
In other words, without Baptism no one can be saved. This is cer- 
tainly making our statement as strong as possible. However, this 

76 



GOD IS UNSOLICITOUS FOR SOULS. 77 

necessity is not so absolute as not to suffer some exception, not in the 
matter of the effects produced by the sacrament — these are always 
rigorously exacted — but in the matter of the rite or administration of 
Baptism. In other words, there are more ways than one of receiving 
this sacrament. In adults, i. e., in those who have reached the years 
of reason, the effects of Baptism may be supplied by an act of con- 
trition made perfect by charity. This act includes the desire for the 
sacrament, and this desire will supply for the absence of the rite. 
There is a baptism of water, of fire, of blood. The first is Baptism 
as it is ordinarily administered. The second is the fruit of perfect 
contrition coupled with the desire or purpose to receive the sacrament. 
The third is martyrdom, or the dying for the faith of it (Acts i. 5, 
Mark x. 39). 

II. This teaching of the Church with regard to the Baptism of 
desire is not an innovation, nor is it a loophole. It is based on the 
authority of Scripture, and is corroborated by the testimony of the 
fathers. Says St. Augustine : " This baptism is as of much avail 
for the remission of sin as if the individual had been washed in the 
waters of fontal baptism." How does this meet the difficulty relative 
to those who are beyond the knowledge of Baptism and its necessity ? 
Simply because it shows us a way opened by Providence which 
all men may follow to salvation. God works in wondrous ways and 
the acts of His love can not be numbered by the sands of the sea. To 
all outside of Christendom He gives light, more or less, but always 
sufficiently abundant, to see the path of rectitude. Every man knows 
the general principle of morality, which is that good must be done, 
evil must be avoided. Adhesion to this principle, no matter how 
many or how heinous mistakes are made, renders the man upright 
in intent, which is the only thing God considers. This uprightness 



7B APOLOGETICA. 

must have its reward. If Sacramental Baptism can not be secured, 
then providence in God's own mysterious way will come to the rescue. 
St. Thomas says that God will deny nothing to the man who does 
all he can. This is only reasonable. If there is no other way out of 
it, He will provide even to the limit of miracle. The Spirit of God 
worketh incessantly, and what is to hinder the human soul from 
being touched to love and contrition and the desire for the regenerat- 
ing laver? No one knows how many may be lost who were held in 
loving arms over the baptismal font. Neither does any one know 
how many are saved whose infancy was passed in barbarism and 
who waxed into manhood and old age amid the excesses of the 
wildest savagery. 



XXXIV.— (Bob 1l0 mot Solicitous for Souls. 

Introduction. — The consistency with which truth is always garbed 
is evidenced in every doctrine of the Church from its widest general- 
ization dov/n to its most particular application. It is this consistency 
which is a distinguishable element in the beautiful harmony which 
is so characteristic of all Catholic teaching. Mistress of the whole 
domain of moral and dogmatic facts, she is unafraid of any of the 
consequences of her utterances. Along with this established preroga- 
tive is seen the benignity of her universal sway. Noble, all her man- 
dates are elevating. Infallible, all her tenets are permanent, immu- 
table ; she changes with none of the vicissitudes of the race. Tender, 
she is domineered in the exercise of her queenship by the divine 
spirit of charity. There is nothing cruel in any of her manifestations. 
A benefactress, the whole world is better for her advent. It may be 
sometimes the case that we are unable to fathom everything within 
the deposit of faith. Mystery, however, detracts not necessarily 
from verity. It does not follow that because we do not understand 
we must repudiate. This is especially true relatively to the subject 
of infants who die without Baptism. Yet we must avow that even 
here God's goodness must in some way be patent. 

I. The necessity of Baptism is as rigorous for children as it is for 
adults. Yea, it is more rigorous. All who have attained the use of 
reason while in the impossibility of reaching eternal bliss without the 
sacrament, may, if not baptized in reality, be regenerated by martyr- 
dom or by desire. This latter is an impossibility for babes — ^born or 
unborn. The status of the Holy Innocents falls outside of our present 

79 



8o APOLOGETICA. 

scope. Must we, then, conclude that the gates of heaven will never 
open for children who die without Baptism ? This is the only deduc- 
tion admissible. Does God wish their salvation with divine earnest- 
ness and sincerity ? There is only one answer. Yes ; God does wish 
their eternal welfare, and He wishes it earnestly and sincerely. Sup- 
pose there is no explanation possible ; then " ours not to make reply, 
ours not to reason why,'* ours only to bow down in submission to 
the overwhelming majesty of infinite truth. Still let us consider first 
that, had the human race persevered in the primal justice with which 
it was adorned at its creation, this contingency would not have 
occurred. Hence the present sad condition of man has not been 
brought about by the Creator, but by the creature. The trans.- 
gression introduced a new state of things, and all its consequences 
are primarily to be attributed to man. We know that many untimely 
deaths happen through the fault of parents — the fault of negligence 
— ^the fault of crime. 

II. Yet this view does not compensate the babe for its unutter- 
able loss. We find ourselves confronted by what can only be con- 
sidered as an irreparable calamity. Let us put the matter at its worst. 
Beings irresponsible are punished? Beings to whom all voluntary 
action is an impossibility are subjected to the same negative penalty 
as men who transgress in the fulness of light and liberty, and all be- 
cause, without any fault of theirs, they have not had poured upon 
them the saving laver ! Again an affirmative reply is the only one we 
can make. Could not God interfere ? Undoubtedly it is in His power 
to do so. Why does He not ? Who can say ? He alone knows, and 
because He knows we have the assurance that somewhere or other 
in the harmonies of the Infinite there is compensation. God is just 
beyond conception, and God is good beyond any effort of ours to con- 



GOD IS NOT SOLICITOUS FOR SOULS. 8i 

ceive or express. Somewhere and somehow in the eternities His 
justice and His mercy will kiss. We have admitted, and it is all 
Catholic teaching requires us to admit — we have admitted, in the 
question here submitted, only a negative effect of the lack of Baptism ; 
we have admitted only their exclusion from the face to face vision of 
their Maker. They are unconditioned for heaven. They do not be- 
long there. Have we not customs and regulations somewhat similar ? 
Do we allow every one that reaches our shores to disembark ? Do we 
permit unconditional citizenship? What makes a citizen? Certain 
terms to be fulfilled and then the lifting of the applicant's hand as he 
makes his bow of allegiance, and, lo! all the privileges and protec- 
tion of the national banner are bestowed upon him. Should we 
wonder in a spirit of scepticism that God is in His way exclusive, 
exacts conditions, and to the sacramental sprinkling of a little water 
vouchsafes the right to the unending bliss of His kingdom ? Because 
we do not understand, let us not reject. I know that He is just, and, 
therefore, no wrong is done the helpless child. I know that He is 
good, and that in some way and somewhere in His vast spaces His 
hand is caressing tenderly the little children outside His realm. 



XXXV.— (5ot)'0 provibence Stretcbee IRot ®ut 

®\>er Soul6* 

Introduction. — Possibly there is no decision of the Church which 
grates more harshly on the sensibilities of men than that which 
affirms that unbaptized children can not enter the kingdom of heaven. 
But feeling is the poorest guide which reason can follow. In fact, 
it is but a blind guide, or worse, no guide at all. What we are most 
concerned with is truth. It would be very easy for the Church to 
win the applause of the world. However, she is not " playing to the 
galleries." She is the inspired teacher. She has but one mission, 
and that is to preach the word of God, baptizing all men in the name 
of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. " Amen, amen, 
I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy 
Ghost he can not enter the kingdom of God " (John iii. 5). This is 
the word of God, and the Church must promulgate and defend it. 
Still it must not be thought that the opponents of Catholic doctrine 
are the only ones to whom the difficulties of this question are apparent. 
Nor must they think that they alone are moved by the awfulness of 
the verdict. Since the beginning the fathers and doctors have been 
exercised, and it is not out of place to put on record some of their 
views. 

I. Opinions vary. St. Augustine, adhering to Scripture, goes to 
the length of asserting that these children are in the same dungeon 
house as the reprobate. He was influenced by the absolute pro- 
nouncement of Christ and the terrible nature of original sin and its 
consequences. He seems to be alone in his attitude. Calvinists, 

82 



PROVIDENCE NOT OVER SOULS. 83 

urged by what motives or principles I know not, assure the salvation 
of the unbaptized children of the predestined. Cajetan holds that 
the children of faithful parents are saved by the prayers of their 
progenitors. This was very nearly condemned at the Council of 
Trent. We are admonished by theologians that it is an unsafe view. 
Bonaventure believes that such children will owe their salvation to 
the piety of those who brought them into the world. One theologian 
asserts that there is given to these unbaptized ones a lucid interval 
during which they are baptized with the baptism of desire. Others 
again suppose that there is some unknown way opened to these 
unfortunates. We have advanced the above to make it evident how 
the hearts of many of the teachers in the Church have been stirred 
in order to bring not alleviation to the departed, but comfort to 
those who are left behind. 

II. These opinions have not been condemned by the Church. 
They have not been approved either. If they afford consolation, so 
much the better. They all imply sound doctrine. They all admit 
that without Baptism it is impossible to be saved. They all aim at 
finding some way or other by which the effects of Baptism may be 
caused in the absence of the sacrament. They are mindful of original 
sin and its consequences, which are removable only by Baptism of 
some kind. This sin, in which all are born, is not a positive act. It is, 
rather, a condition. By it the soul is in a state of privation. The 
situation is a negative one. There are no rights to any of the rewards 
promised to those who have been freed from this taint. We are 
aware that in the beginning our first parents enjoyed prerogatives 
which were not essential to their nature and which they were to 
transmit to their descendants. Their disobedience stripped them of 
all these extraordinary privileges — stripped them and all posterity. 



84 'APOLOGETICA. 

Among the gifts was the right to and a certain fitness for life eternal. 
What they had not they could not give. Their descendants come 
into existence in this denuded condition, and so, until all impediments 
are removed by Baptism, they possess neither the right to nor the 
fitness for the kingdom of heaven. Herein is the root of the difficulty. 
There is original sin. Every one is born with it. Baptism alone 
effaces it. Children dying unbaptized die in their original sin, and 
so the gates of heaven are barred against them. The question will 
still arise: Why all this? Our impotency to find a reply does not 
militate against the truth ; it simply is one of the constantly multi- 
plying proofs that our minds are small, very small, islands in an 
ocean of limitations. 



XXXVI— (Bob'6 Iprovlbence Boee IRot protect 

SouU\ 

Introduction. — Among the many adversaries who oppose against 
the existence and perfections of God the objection drawn from the 
case of infants who die without being baptized, probably the hardest 
to be convinced of their error are those who, for want of a better 
name, we may call sentimentalists. Sentimentalism is a perversion 
and a monstrosity. They extinguish the light of reason and they sin 
against sound sense and the most elementary laws of logic. Sen- 
timentalism is mawkish — nay, more, repulsive. It is not true pathos. 
It is not genuine feeling. It is sensibility running wild, and it 
swarms with the germs of disease and corruption. It is artificial, 
and, therefore, begets lies. It contradicts all perspective. Truth 
in its eyes becomes distorted, and loses all its significance and sub- 
stantiality. It is chiefly manifest in the difficulties which it pro- 
poses against the fundamental teaching of Christianity. It is most 
clamorous in opposition to the justice of God, inasmuch as that jus- 
tice abides by the reparative or punitive sanction of divine law. 
It seems to imply in all its utterance this one calumny, that the 
Church of God holds more for justice than for mercy, and that 
it is inexorable in its attitude of unforgiveness. It was not a Catholic 
who wrote in his hymns the following description of the heaven of 
Christianity : 

" In heaven above, among the blest, 
What mortal tongue can tell, 
The joys of saints when looking down 
On damned souls in hell ? " 

—Watts. 
This is not the ideal Catholic paradise. 

85 



86 APOLOGETICA. 

I. The mind of the Church and the heart of the same universal and 
tender mother are revealed in the serious investigations of her saints 
and scholars. Relative to the fate of the unbaptized infants, we have 
the assertion that it is better for them to have been than not to have 
been. This, of course, can hardly be affirmed of those who are 
eternally doomed. These children possess natural knowledge of 
God and a natural love for Him and a natural joy in Him. They 
are by their very condition precluded from all supernatural knowl- 
edge, joy, and love. St. Thomas proclaims that they have no sorrow, 
but, rather, will be sharers, according to their nature, in many gifts 
of the divine goodness and perfections. " Although," he continues, 
" they are not united with Him in glory, they are not entirely sepa- 
rated from Him. Nay, they are in union with Him by participating in 
His bounty and by the joy that comes from such knowledge and 
love that it is in the power of their nature to attain." There are 
floods of consolation in this view. They can not be insensible to the 
wonderful privilege that is theirs in having left the world one 
" white personal integrity," and are out of the danger of being con- 
signed to the rigors of everlasting punishment. The man raised by 
baptism to a supernatural status could not be happy in their cir- 
cumstances, because he would have missed the end of his elevation. 
This lack will bring no pain to the infant unregenerated, because 
the heart desires only what the mind knows, and they remain in 
blissful ignorance of the higher purpose of God in creating. 

II. This benign view of the situation is, of course, entirely a per- 
sonal one. It is worth only the reasons which are brought forward 
in its support. It has affixed to it neither the approbation nor the 
condemnation of the Church. It is valuable because, while it shows 
that the ill-fated children are not entirely lost, while it proves that 



GOD'S PROVIDENCE DOES NOT PROTECT SOULS. 87 

Catholic doctrine is as cognizant of God's mercy as of His justice, 
it also establishes the wonderful freedom Catholics enjoy in all the 
zones of intellectual activity outside the area inclosed within the 
luminous pillars of dogma or revealed truth. Dogmas are safe 
guides. The mind which works under their radiance operates 
toward truth always. It is security for us to know that without 
baptism no one enters the kingdom which is coming. If we under- 
stand, let us rejoice; if we are confronted by mystery, let us adore. 
This subject may well be closed with the remark of Bellarmine: 
" Our pity for these children avails them nothing, our severity hurts 
them not. But it would be much to our own injury if, on account 
of unprofitable mercy toward them, we were to defend with ob- 
stinacy any teaching opposed to the Church or to the Scripture. So 
let no mere human sympathy be our guide, but let us in all things 
be conformed to the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church and of the 
Fathers." 



xxxviL— ^bere lis mo Ibercafter. 

Introduction. — It is impossible to fix a point beyond which im- 
piety will not go. It is a school of negation. " To deny is easy ; 
nothing is sooner learned or more generally practised. As matters 
go, we need no man of polish to teach it, but, rather, a hundred men 
of wisdom to show us its limits and teach us its reverse." This is 
true to-day, as true as it was in the days of Carlyle. It is a ruinous 
vice. It essays to pull down; it never builds up. It has attacked 
all the cherished ideals of humanity, and has never substituted any- 
thing for them. It has contradicted everything; it has neither 
proved nor disproved anything. What does it give us in place of 
God, in place of religion, in place of immortality, in place of eternity ? 
It has strewn the shores of the ages with wrecks of all splendid 
things. It has made of the minds and hearts of men blackened ruins. 
It has driven the soul of man into exile here, it has forced that soul 
to herd with lower natures in the present, and pictures its future 
as an eternal and unconscious blank. Matter is the only thing which 
exists. 

I. Materialism does not approve itself to any sound mind. Long 
ago this teaching was condemned by the voice of Wisdom : "All men 
are vain in whom there is not the knowledge of God; who have 
imagined either fire or the circle of the stars or the great water or 
the sun and moon to be the gods that rule the world ; with whose 
beauty being delighted they took them to be gods " (Wis. xiii. 1-3). 
It is our privilege to ask these philosophists for their proof. If they 

88 



THERE IS NO HEREAFTER. 89 

are not secure in their position, if they put forth only a baseless 
theory, how arrogant and reckless and audacious must they be to 
attack the truths that are nearest and dearest to the mind and heart 
of man! Triflers, they should be treated only with the silence of 
contempt. It is consoling to know that from the very beginning 
until the present time, all their so-called arguments are reducible 
to mere reiteration of their views. They have only changed their 
phraseology to suit the accidental modifications of language brought 
about by the advance of the positive sciences. We can not oppose 
the progress of human investigation. We can not, nor would we. 
We feel, however, that incredulity and impiety have impeded the 
advancement of genuine knowledge in the regions of higher thought. 
" In the beginning," says St. Thomas, " the ancient philosophers, 
looking at the universe with gross and carnal eyes, saw nothing but 
what fell under the senses." It was only by slow stages that they 
reached any knowledge of the truth. The materialists of to-day have 
gone backward. They have returned to the infancy of thought. 
They teach substantially what was taught before Anaxagoras and 
Aristotle. They are as much in the dark concerning the origin and 
the essence of things as was Lucretius and his adherents. The world 
is as much a puzzle to them to-day as it was to the early thinkers who, 
like them, denied the existence of a living and personal Deity anterior 
and superior to the creation of things. 

II. What is materialism? Doctrinally, it holds that everything 
which exists in the universe, from the inanimate rock to man, 
originated from primordial, non-intelligent, lifeless matter. They 
predicate of this matter that it and it alone is eternal. There 
is no such thing as everlasting spirit, conscience, virtue, or God. Say 
what they will, protest as they may, this, no matter how the colors 



90 APOLOGETICA. 

or the shadings of their view may change, is their fundamental 
axiom. As mentioned, this theory is not a production of modem 
times. It is as old as thought. We might excuse it when the world 
was young. What must we say of it after the lapse of so many 
centuries? We are inclined to ask^ Do they really assert this rank 
materialism ? Here are some of their own expressions : " Matter 
is the sole principle of all that exists" (Buchner). "The affinity 
of matter is the omnipotence which creates all things " (Moleschott). 
" Matter is absolute. It is without end and without beginning. 
It is unconditioned, independent, and absolute" (Loewenthal). 
What are we? Creatures of matter, products of fire, earth, air, and 
water. What are we? Bubbles on this great ocean of matter 
floating in sun or shadow, disappearing in the vast bosom of that 
lifeless sea to make way for other air bells. Away, therefore, with 
all conscience, with all virtue, with all noble living! Let us dance 
our short bubble life in the sunshine, let us color brief existence with 
all the rainbow hues. Let us eat and drink and be m.erry, for to- 
morrow we die and are not known, nor know ourselves forever. 
Eat and drink we may, but with such a fate hanging over us, to be 
merry is simply to be intoxicated ; is simply not to think ; is simply 
to forget. This is all materialism holds out for us. 



XXXVllL— Sbere Us IRo Ibereaftetr. 

Introduction. — Not seldom the statement of a doctrine proves 
sufficient for either its victory or its overthrow. The more clearly 
materialism is presented, the more swiftly is it doomed to repudi- 
ation. As it stands to-day, it is abhorrent to every instinct and every 
yearning of human nature. It brings comfort to nobody. Even 
were it true, it would seem kindness to man to withhold it from 
his knowledge. It is untrue, and yet its propagation is so harmful 
that, wherever it is adopted, ruin of every description follows in 
its wake. It undermines personal integrity, loosens domesticities, 
and, as history attests, it threatens the downfall of authority in the 
state, as well as rebellion, revolution, and anarchy. It is the parent 
of the crimes which are committed in the name of liberty, as it 
understands liberty, that is, in the name of unbridled license. When 
the system flourishes, it flourishes not because it appeals to man's 
reason or to what is noble in him, but because it flatters either am- 
bition or sensuality. 

I. Materialism, of course, by its very nature, eliminates God. 
Its first cry is atheistic. Its last clamor is blasphemous. Perhaps 
the best way to meet the materialist is by denial. We can not but 
admit that all the forms of corporeal existence spring from a ma- 
terial source. Nor is it necessary to deny that this is true even of 
living things — of the plant, of the mere animal. Thus much has 
generally been accepted by Catholic science just as it was positively 
declared by Plato and Aristotle. Here we might pause to interject 
the remark that Catholic doctors have not invented a logic or a 

91 



92 APOLOGETICA. 

metaphysics to suit the teachings of the Church. They have only 
applied the principles of right reasoning and abstraction, which were 
established by the light of pure intelligence, by the investigations 
of the nature and the essences of things as carried on by such minds 
as Aristotle and Plato. These principles were maintained three 
hundred years before Christ — three hundred years before the re- 
demption of mankind was achieved, and all the dogmas involved 
in that redemption were uttered by lips divine for the emancipation 
of humanity. 

II. We have defined the lengths to which we are compelled to go 
with materialists. Our position is that out of matter only matter 
can come, and that out of life alone can the living thing proceed. 
These two claims we are not unwilling to concede. The life, how- 
ever, which we are free to grant, is the life we discover in plants 
and in animals — plant life, animal life. The life we find in man, 
especially his rational life and his liberty of action, human life, 
transcends all the resources, all the potentiality of matter. Matter 
can not produce a human thought, an act of human will, a human 
word, a spiritual soul. Matter may become the tenant of spirit, 
but spirit can not owe its origin to matter. Develop matter and 
refine it to the utmost, reduce it to the atom, confine it to a line or 
a point, put it into whatever alembic filled with the most powerful 
agents and reagents, submit it to all the material forces of the uni- 
verse, it will never emerge anything but a material entity, and 
the chasm between it and spirit no finite power can bridge. This 
is only a statement, but it implies an argument which has never 
been answered by the materialist, and which is always a voice say- 
ing to him, Thus far, and no farther. This thesis of ours is provable. 
Moreover, it does not bristle, like its contradictory, with difficulties 



THERE IS NO HEREAFTER. 93 

insuperable. They deify matter, but their god from first to last has 
only material characteristics. They style him infinite; he is 
limited; he is a congeries of limits; he is a mass of atoms. They 
call matter indestructible. The most they can prove, perhaps, is 
that up to the present the mass of matter has undiminished since 
it came into existence. If by indestructibility they mean that it 
will not be destroyed, I neither affirm nor deny. But we must deny 
their allegation if they hold that it can not be destroyed. A superior 
power can destroy it. If they say He will not, our position is neutral. 
If they say it is beyond His power, then we part company, for 
there is One who said of the human body, to dust it shall return, 
who can lay waste the mountains and the hills and the cities and all 
the pride thereof, who can put out the sun and the stars and re- 
duce all His creation to the nothingness whence it sprang. 



XXXIX.— iberc Is mo Ibercafter. 

Introduction. — Materialism is the grossest conception of the 
essences of things as well as the most imperfect and inadequate 
theory ever advanced for the explanation of the universe. In fact, 
in matter, as in everything created, we have the same unceasing cry, 
" Know ye that the Lord, he is God : he made us and not we our- 
selves " (Ps. xcix. 3). We find some qualities in matter, but in 
none of them, for example, is the power of moving itself, for motion 
is something outside of the body and its extension. In fact, the 
insufficiency of matter is a characteristic everywhere emphasized by 
men of science. Says de Maistre : " Everywhere what moves pre- 
cedes that which is moved. Matter is nothing but a proof of spirit." 
Hence, when materialists insist upon matter as being eternally 
in motion, they emit an opinion not only gratuitous, but contra- 
dictory and absurd. This is the verdict of Newton in his century 
and of Virchow in ours. If motion can not be explained by matter 
alone, the difficulty becomes greater when there is question of the 
composition of organized bodies, and the order and regulated energy 
which they display. Fortuitousness, hazard, chance, none of these 
things afford an elucidation. How long would it take for all the 
letters that spell the words that constitute the Bible or the Iliad, 
how long would it take them unassisted by an intelligence to fall into 
the places and the lines which they now occupy in these two great 
productions ? 

I. Materialists deny that the human soul is immortal. What has 
reason to say on this momentous subject? Will man's soul survive 

94 



THERE IS NO HEREAFTER. 95 

its separation from the body? What is man? He is a rational 
animal. His body will go the way of all material things, but the 
elements will not absorb his whole vitality. He is a conscious being. 
He has a perception and an understanding of himself, and he dis- 
tinguishes himself from everything that is not he. He determines 
himself freely to act or not to act, and he can steer himself even 
against his strongest inclinations. He is an individual. He has a 
personality. He lives his own life. He has a domain whither no 
one can penetrate — the sanctuary of his thoughts and aspirations. 
There is in him a faculty which is above matter, above all the forces 
of matter — a faculty which can control and deify matter. He has 
two natures, a corporeal and a spiritual nature; he has two lives, 
a corporeal and a spiritual life. Those two lives conspire and make 
one person, and the principle which communicates vitality to his 
lower nature, and which is his higher nature, is his soul. 

II. This soul has in its essence nothing in common with matter. 
It has powers above the compass of matter. In fact, its powers rise 
so high beyond the circuit of matter that we have to apply to it a 
term which excludes everything that is matter. We call it imma- 
terial. It is the negation of matter. How do we know it has these 
properties? How do we distinguish it from matter? We do not 
see the soul. It is as viewless as the air, but it is just as palpable 
by the signs it manifests. I know its nature as I know the nature 
of other entities. I know its nature by its operations. Our Cate- 
chism — that sublime and yet simple compendium of all theology — 
our Catechism speaks of three operations. They are the will, the 
memory, and the understanding. Can matter will or remember or 
understand? Take all the qualities of mere matter, change, com- 
bine, refine them as you will, what will the outcome be? Simply 



96 APOLOGETICA. 

a something characterized by extension, inertia, weight ; a something 
cognizable by the senses; a something from which it is impossible 
to evolve a thought; a something in which an abstraction can find 
no place ; a something dull and senseless, which can not look back- 
ward to the past nor forward to the future; a something which, 
even if animated, hardly realizes the present; a something which 
can not reply or resist when forced by agents outside of itself. It 
is not so with thought or with memory or will. They are endowed 
with properties of a different order. They are not weighed down 
or confined. Matter is no barrier to them. Neither is space. No 
scalpel can divide a thought. No forceps can seize it. No power 
can imprison it. It can compass the ends of creation, the limits of 
the universe, it can traverse the interstellar spaces and fathom 
the ocean caves. This is thought as we may inspect it in our- 
selves or study it as communicated to us by others. No one can 
fail to see how vast is the difference between matter as we know 
it and thought as we know it. From the thought we go to the 
vital principle, to the source, and we reach the soul ; that is to say, a 
substance, not material, but gifted with all that accentuates thought. 
This soul, say materialists, is matter. This soul, all Christianity 
and all Paganism exclaim, this soul is immortal, i. e., it can not die. 



i\ 



XL.— zrbere He mo Ibereaften 

Introduction. — To make the above declaration is to assert that 
when death comes to a man it annihilates him ; when dust returns to 
dust, in that dust will be found the atoms of the triturated soul. It 
means that wherever we go to look for the one that is dead our 
search is bounded by the visible horizons of the universe. There is 
no God, no heaven, no hell. The outlook is one of despair and gloom. 
Against this teaching there is rebellion in every man. That rebellion 
is nothing but the spiritual soul proclaiming its immortality. " I do 
not all die " was the faith wrung from the heart of a pagan. Christ 
called His Father the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. 
This was long after those patriarchs had been gathered to their fore- 
bears. He then added the inevitable conclusion : " He is not the God 
of the dead, but of the living " (Luke xx. 38). There is not a single 
consideration of man's nature by which we are not led to affirm that 
the soul will go on existing after the disintegration of the body. It 
follows from the nature of the soul, from the characteristics of each 
operation of the soul. 

I. Yes; reason approves the conclusion that man's soul is 
immortal. There is the physical condition of the soul. It is simple. 
It is not made up of parts. Death is corruption, but this break- 
ing up into components can be alleged only of what is com- 
pound. This is evidenced by the acts of the soul. Apprehension is 
simple, and likewise judgment, as well as ratiocination and the ex- 
pression of a wish or a desire. Take the power of reflection, whereby 

97 



98 APOLOGETICA, 

the mind views its own thoughts. There is no such flexibility in 
mere matter, nor in any of the forces springing from matter. Nay, 
more, the soul is independent of matter. It does not depend on any- 
thing corporal for its existence or its operations. It is immaterial. 
It is a spirit joined to and vitalizing matter. This spirituality is 
made manifest by the soul's acts. They are all spiritual. They are 
all independent of matter. Matter can never beget the spiritual. 
They belong to two different worlds and demand different origins. 
As easy would it be to generate light out of absolute darkness as to 
produce spirit out of matter. 

II. Take, moreover, into consideration the ideas of which the 
mind is the cause; consider how in themselves these ideas 
transcend all matter, and how they rise beyond all powers 
of mere bodies tO' produce them. They have the fine aspirations 
which surpass any suggestion of matter. What kinship is there be- 
tween sensible objects and virtue, and right and wrong, and heroism 
and self-sacrifice, and patriotism and what we call moral courage, and 
so many other concepts that originate in the intelligence of man? 
When a man is conceived and born, a material agency may explain 
the origin of his body. But what of his soul? What, who is its 
producer ? Does it spring from matter ? It can, not. Is it an efflu- 
ence of some spiritual entity ? Again we have to say. No. It can not 
spring into being of itself. No spiritual emanation can account for 
it. Spiritual beings are one and indivisible, and therefore suffer no 
partition. There remains only the solution that it is summoned into 
being from nothing, by a creative act which God alone can perform. 
So each individual soul is a distinct creation of God. Away with 
materialism or any other " ism " which proclaims a lower origin for 
the human soul! This is all advanced by way of a prelude to a 



THERE IS NO HEREAFTER, 99 

closer investigation of the destiny of man's soul. In all that is ad- 
vanced there are latent cogent reasons why the mortality of the soul 
is inadmissible. The very nature of man is a demonstration of his 
immortality. We may adduce the proof derivable from the uni- 
versality of man's belief that his spirit will not die. The race has 
always professed that there is an everlasting life, and has professed 
it with the same unanimity with which it has asserted the existence 
of God. This is attested by Cicero, whose words contain an argu- 
ment : " If universal consent is the voice of nature, and if all men 
in all times and all countries unite in admitting that everything does 
not end with death, we find ourselves compelled to acquiesce in their 
belief" (Quaest. Tusc. i. 15). 



LofC. 



XLi.— ^bere IF© mo Ibcreatter. 

Introduction. — Why do men refuse assent to the noble and con- 
soling doctrine of the soul's immortality? Is it in the interests of 
truth? Is their ultimatum in this matter extorted by conviction? 
Have they any solid foundation whereon to base their assumption? 
They certainly have not advanced the cause of truth. They certainly 
have not expanded the area of knowledge. They have driven their 
votaries back to the very beginning of investigation and have suc- 
ceeded in so obscuring the most elementary data and principles as to 
bewilder ordinary minds. Their efforts in behalf of education and 
civilization have been bootless. There can be only one effect of their 
propaganda. Their doctrine gives free rein to the individual, disrupts 
the family, and undermines the state. According to them nothing is 
real save what comes under the senses, and sensual pleasure is the 
supreme end of existence. 

I. In spite of all their slavering, the weight of reason is on the 
side of the teaching that the soul of man is immortal. 

In the impossibility of verifying by reason alone this great 
truth, the arguments advanced in its behalf go much more nearly 
proving it than their allegations go toward sustaining the opposite. 
In other words, we are impelled by many motives to give 
credence to the doctrine of the Church, whereas not a single 
argument worthy of consideration is found to confirm the contention 
of materialists. If we inspect closely the nature of the human soul, 
it seems patent that it can exist and act without the body. The 

loo 



THERE IS NO HEREAFTER. loi 

principle of life is essential to the body. The reverse does not hold. 
The soul is in itself incorruptible. This we conclude from those 
thoughts, those concepts, those discursive powers, those wishes, those 
desires, those operations of man which have no relation what- 
ever to the body, which are higher than any possible suggestion 
of the senses, which so often imply a contempt for what is carnal and 
for death, that enemy which haunts sensualists like a spectre. It 
is from these considerations we derive the absence of all composition 
in the soul, the absence of all parts — a condition which emancipates 
it from corruption. Can anything be more living than life? Can 
anything be more antagonistic to death than that which, alive itself, 
makes everything in man to live? 

II. Is the desire of total extinction natural to man? Is 
there not a recoil of his whole being from such a fate? It is a 
vain inquiry to ask how the soul will live after death. What 
manner of life will it lead? It will follow the lines of its own 
activity. It will be within its power still to will, still to remember, 
still to understand, and the acts of those mental agencies will be bliss- 
ful or wretched according as the soul has conditioned herself during 
the days of her exile. Over and above this instinctive repugnance to 
cessation of the totality of individual existence, which is as universal 
as time and space and the race, which is congenital, and which, as 
we have every reason to assume, is a gift to nature from nature's 
God, a gift which He must, for the having given it, ripen into frui- 
tion, over and above this is the omnipresent, irresistible desire for per- 
fect happiness. This is found in the heart of every man. It comes from 
God. Has he planted it in every breast simply as a hunger that will 
never be satisfied? Is God crucifying humanity on the cross of a 
yearning never to be sated? No one will say anything but nay to 



I02 APOLOGETICA. 

such a question. Every one will answer, He has given the longing 
for flawless felicity and, therefore, is He bound, at least by the per- 
fections of His own divine nature, to make it possible for every man 
to reach that blessing. Man can not be happy in completeness here. 
This must come to him in some other world. Even in that other 
world it is not realizable save in the possession of eternal life. 
Eternal life is immortality, and hence the significance of the ques- 
tion of Christ, " For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole 
world, and suffer the loss of his soul? " (Mark viii. 36). 



XLU.—Zhcte IFs IRo Ibercaftcr. 

Introduction. — There is a law made manifest, in some or other 
way, to every individual conscience. Its legislator is God. His 
right to make it is deducible from His creative act. That He exercises 
this right follows from the perfections of His being. We call it the 
law of nature. Of its existence there can be no reasonable doubt. 
God not only knows what is intrinsically good or evil, but He must 
love the one and hold in hatred the other. Nay, more, He must will 
the one and condemn the other. As man has been created free, God 
can not compel his actions, but it must be His purpose that man do 
good and avoid evil. This implies legislation, law. As a perfect 
ruler He must prohibit what is against and command what makes 
for order in His dominion. A law which by its very nature is so 
essential for man must be promulgated, that is, man must know it. 
That so it is, is revealed by conscience. 

I. This law implies another existence besides that of the present. 
Hence we infer the survival of the soul after death. Every law 
must have a sanction. Every law must have attached to it a 
reward or a punishment. The establishing a sanction is a func- 
tion implied in legislative action. The sanction must be one 
which approves itself to reason as sufficient for its purpose. Sup- 
pose that God affixed no sanction to His law. In this case 
the inference would naturally be that God was indifferent as to 
whether His law was observed or not. In other words, contempt 
for His dictates would be of as little concern to Him as observance. 

103 



I04 APOLOGETICA, 

What, then, becomes of the sanctity of God? How could we call 
Him thrice holy? How could He punish infractions? What obli- 
gating force would His laws have? What a useless thing the law 
would be! These conclusions militate against the most elementary 
conception of the Deity and can not be entertained. A sanction, 
therefore, must there be. Nor will any kind of a sanction be satis- 
factory. It must be adequate. If not adequate — if by its qualities 
it be insufificient to deter from wrong doing or to incite to the fulfil- 
ment of the law, then it is nothing worth, it is not a sanction. Is the 
sanction as it can be enforced in this life possessed of these condi- 
tions ? 

II. We must admit that there are rewards and punish- 
ments here below. We know that virtue begets true peace and 
genuine joy of heart. It avails much to helpful conditions not only 
of mind, but of body. It conciliates the majority of civilized men. 
It secures the esteem and affection of our fellows in many instances, 
and it redounds to the prosperity and general welfare of communi- 
ties. We are aware that vice is attended with many evil conse- 
quences. Yet does all this constitute a competent sanction? We 
think not. A sanction worthy of the name should be in proportion 
to the degrees of virtue or of vice. It should outweigh whatever 
disadvantages follow from the observance of the law, as well as any 
emolument gained by its violation. This does not appear to be the 
case in any sanction that can be presented in this existence, as we 
know it. Virtue has many rewards, but it does not always com- 
pensate for the trials and the losses sustained in practising it. Vice, 
too, in this world is at times attended by many and great evils. But 
how often are these evils nullified by success and prosperity and 
enjoyment? Take the case of a man to whom is presented this 



THERE IS NO HEREAFTER, 105 

alternative, " Do wrong or die." If he breaks the law, he may be 
tortured by remorse, it is true, but he retains his life, a blessing which 
all men prefer to any of the goods of earth. If he keeps the law, 
what reward does he receive here for his heroism? It would seem, 
then, that the sanction furnished here is incomplete. Therefore, there 
must be a somewhere else in which, when the body dies, the soul lives. 
This conclusion is demanded we think, by God's sanctity and justice. 



XLiii.— ^bere Us mo Ibereaftcr. 

Introduction, — There is nothing so wearying and, which is the 
same thing, so wearing as the confrontment of objections in the mat- 
ter of religion. It is simply a brushing away of the same obnoxious 
insects. Their buzzing is monotonous. It is the same insistence of 
the same unreasonable protesting. The opposition of incredulity 
to-day is identical with that of yesterday. If there be change at all, 
it is a change of phrase merely. We venture to say that against the 
principal tenets of Christianity there has been offered no new counter 
argument, let us say, since the days of Simon Magus. That these 
arguments have been answered goes without saying. They were 
riddled by Tertullian, by St. Augustine, by St. Thomas, by Suarez. 
Still they incessantly appear. This is true not only of the existence 
of the Deity, but as well of the immortality of the soul. The difficul- 
ties raised in every age have a familiar appearance. What is more, 
we may safely affirm that all these demurrers are reducible in every 
case to a negation. The watchword is. Deny ! Deny ! Deny ! The 
importance of the dogma of the incorruptibility of the soul is of equal 
degree with the dogma of God's existence. Hence, with regard to 
the soul we must assert that its survival after the death of the body 
is eminently consonant with reason. 

I. Immortality belongs to a being by its very essence; ex- 
ample, God. It is of the essence of God that He be and live 
always. Or it belongs to a being by reason of the nature which 
God has given it. Or, it is a privilege granted to an entity, 

io6 



THERE IS NO HEREAFTER. 107 

as is the case with the human body, which will rise again never 
to die. The soul of man falls into the second category. So 
we say immortality is natural to the human soul. In other words, it 
is of the very nature of the soul to live, when once created, forever. 
If it is to cease to live, then its breaking up will happen through 
annihilation only. The objection is that it may be annihilated. The 
soul can not destroy itself. Self destruction or suicide on the part 
of the soul is an absolute impossibility. It is simple. It is spiritual. 
Fancy a thought annihilating itself. Yet a thought is only an acci- 
dent of the soul. Fancy the will or the intellect reducing itself to 
nothingness. They are only faculties of the soul. If, therefore, the 
soul is to sink into non-existence it must be by the action of another. 
God alone can be that other. 

II. God zvill not annihilate the soul That God can de- 
stroy the soul is beyond a doubt. Such a consummation is within 
the reach of His absolute power. But God has other attri- 
butes besides omnipotence. These attributes militate against the 
destruction of the soul. We might ask. Is it in accordance with 
the divine wisdom to suppose that having gifted the soul with an 
immortal nature, that after the lapse of time, He is going to contra- 
dict His purpose of immortality by the extinction of that soul ? God 
endowing the soul with a natural immortality expressed His will with 
regard to that soul. Can we conceive any reason why He should 
mutilate its destiny? Scientists affirm that matter is indestructible. 
Why will they not concede the indestructibility of the soul? How 
superior spirit is in all its functions and characteristics to matter! 
There is man's reason, a faculty of his soul. When we consider the 
flights of that power and its lofty beckonings to the will and aspira- 
tions and desires of man, are we at liberty to think that God, who by 



io8 APOLOGETICA. 

His special creation of the soul gave rise to those yearnings, is going 
to frustrate them all? " Every intelligent being," says St. Thomas, 
" naturally desires to be always." But no natural desire will be 
unsatisfied. There is the hope of perfect happiness. Will God, who 
inspired that hope, defeat it ? The perpetual duration of the soul is a 
postulate of divine sanctity and justice. Would God be holy? Would 
He be just were He to fling back the soul into the abyss of extinc- 
tion ? What of reward ? What of punishment ? 

" Thou wilt not leave us in the dust : 
Thou madest man — he knows not why. 
He thinks he was not made to die; 
And Thou hast made him: Thou art just." 



XLiv.— 3e6U0 Cbrl6t ®nl? a fiDam 

Introduction. — This is eminently a skeptical age. Men call it a 
scientific one. Science is the knowledge of things in their causes. 
Infidelity is the most unscientific of all persuasions. It advances no 
proofs. It attacks ever^^thing. Its touch is sacrilegious. Socinus 
declared Christ was a man only. Renan made him a Frenchman. 
" Nothing is so gullible as an unbeliever." To quote, " They have 
gnawed away the Old Testament, they are nibbling away the New. 
They believe the impudent lies and monstrous arithmetic which 
babbles about a million years, a period actually beyond the compre- 
hension of the human intellect." How many lies skepticism has 
swallowed, instead of assimilating the saving truth ! So Christ, they 
say, was a myth. Against this affirmation we have Christ's own 
assertion that He was the Messiah, that He was God. 

I. Christ was the Messiah. The Jews expected a Messiah, an 
anointed one, the one sent, the deliverer of the Jewish people and of 
the world. Some expected a triumphant King, who was to restore to 
Israel its departed earthly glory. These misread Scripture. They mis- 
understood the prophecies. In His dealing with the Samaritan woman, 
who told Him that she knew a Messiah was to come, He answered, 
" I am he, and I am going to Jerusalem, and all that has been said by 
the prophets will be fulfilled." He reviewed at another time all the 
prophets, commencing with Moses, had said of Him, and explained 
all that had been written about Him in the holy books. He declared 
His dignity as Messiah and as King of the Jews before the grand 

109 



iio APOLOGETlCA. 

tribunal of the nation. This declaration was the chief accusation 
brought against Him by the Jews (John xix. 12). They put over 
His cross, " Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews." It is very hard 
to reduce such a large personality, a personality foretold by the 
prophets, a personality unafraid to proclaim His mission and His 
divine descent, a personality who proved in every way that the Old 
Testament spoke of Him, it is very hard to reduce such a personality 
to a myth. Is there an individual in all history, modem or ancient, 
who looms so largely as Christ? That He was the Messiah is an 
established fact. All the indications noted by the prophets as to the 
time of His coming point to Him luminously. He appears at the 
moment Israel is losing her political autonomy, a short time 
before the final dissolution of the Jewish state, at the expiration of 
the sixty-ninth week of years. He appears when the second Temple 
has been built by Zorobabel after the captivity. He graced the 
Temple by His presence just before its final destruction. The priest- 
hood of Aaron was still dedicated to the services of the altar. The 
precursor was preaching penance in the desert, and in Israel and in 
the whole world there was a yearning for the coming of a deliverer. 
He is the descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Juda, of the family 
of David ; He is born in Bethlehem of a Virgin ; He is born without 
splendor. We quote these facts to offset the affirmation that Christ 
was not the Messiah and that other hysterical pronouncement that 
He was a myth. 

11. Christ was not a myth. His career was not a fanciful 
invention. He was not the creation of imagination, a poetic fic- 
tion. There is no character of all history whose existence stands 
out from the records in such colossal and substantial proportions. 
Let a man proclaim to-day on any of our thoroughfares that he is 



JESUS CHRIST ONLY A MAN. m 

the Messiah, that he is the Son of God, that he is God. In what way 
will he be received ? They will pass him by with scorn and laughter. 
They will insist on his being incarcerated. Christ was not received 
thus. He was taken seriously by his followers and his foes. What 
has been the purpose of all unbelief? It has used all its efforts, 
intellectual and material, to oust Him from His historical position. 
His impress is upon the whole world. Men of mind and men of 
station are His adherents. Would it be in the power of a phantom 
to revolutionize and agitate the world as Christ has done? If the 
existence of Christ is a mere invention, then history and all the 
notable characters that live in its pages are myths and nothing more. 
Then are we ourselves and all our environment but the stuff out of 
which dreams are made. 



XLV.— Cbriet a flDan ®nl?^ 

Introduction. — The conflict between so-called science and religion 
since the establishment of the Church has reduced itself to the con- 
tention on the part of the former that the Bible is uninspired, and 
that Christ is not God. The Catholic Church has fought her side 
of the discussion more than well. In every battle, when the smoke 
of the struggle has cleared, it is always discovered that the Church 
is firm on her foundations and she stands in all her beauty with 
her divine charter intact and her lips still proclaiming that her mis- 
sion is from heaven and that God is God and Christ is His Son, and 
that Christ is likewise the upholding power, who centuries ago prom- 
ised, and held to His promise, that He would be with her until the 
consummation of time. Christ or Diana ? was the interrogatory put to 
the faithful in younger days. Christ or science ? is the dilemma con- 
fronting every man coming into the world in all the centuries, and as 
well in this twentieth era of civilization. We refer to the Bible as 
an authentic historic document to evidence the fact, a fact as lucid 
as any fact in the annals of the world, that Christ proved to the 
Jews beyond the possibility of doubting that He was the Messiah 
foretold by the Scriptures. It is noteworthy that Christ appealed 
to their Scriptures. Search the Scriptures, He said, and you will 
find that I am the one so emphatically spoken of by the prophets. 
There is no doubt in any honest mind that the Scribes and Pharisees 
were only too conscious that Christ, the Son of Mary, was the one 
indicated by all the seers from the promise in the Garden of Eden 

112 



CHRIST A MAN ONLY, 113 

down to the days of Daniel. Among the strongest proofs of the 
divinity of Christ is His own affirmation : 

I. Christ is God. The question of antiquity, Jewish and Roman, 
was : " Art thou he who is to come, or look we for another? " (Matt, 
xi. 3). *' Go and relate,'* was the answer of Christ, " what you have 
heard and seen." Christ made His declaration and He confirmed it 
by the holy and thaumaturgical life which He led. There was no 
need of looking for another. The plenitude of time had come, and 
pagans as well as Jews were in expectation. He was predicted and 
He appeared. The desired one appeared. St. Peter (Matt. xvi. 16) 
said in answer to a question from the Master : " Thou art Christ, 
the Son of the living God." The Master approved of the answer. 
He reaffirrned the assertion. He was His own great deputy. He 
declares that He is the omnipotent Master of creation, and of man, 
and of heaven, and of the world of pure spirits, preexisting before 
all creatures, the light and the life of the world, in all things like 
unto the Father, having a right to the same homage ; He declares ac- 
complished in Himself the prophecy of Isaias according to which He 
was to come to save the people; He is the Legislator and King of 
the universe ; He forgives sins. He brings the dead back to life ; He 
is the Judge of the world. 

II. We ask, could any one utter such language save God ? Is it 
possible to employ stronger or more sublime expressions to affirm 
His divine individuality to the world? The people understood Him. 
They did not hear Him say that He was a man favored by heaven, 
or a messenger from God. They heard Him say, and they com- 
prehended fully, that He identified Himself with God. He never 
faltered in His proclamation of His divinity. When He knew that 



114 APOLOGETICA. 

His fate was sealed, in presence of Pilate, who asked Him, " Art 
thou the King of the Jews ? " "I am, but I have a kingdom that 
is not of this world. You shall see the Son of Man sitting on the 
right hand of the power of God and coming in the clouds of heaven " 
(Matt. xxvi. 64). Not only no faltering in his asseveration of 
His godhead, but an emphatic and ever increasing impressiveness 
of assertion. Was there ever such an assertion? Is there a single 
trace of fanaticism therein? We find, on the contrary, good sense, 
calm, moderation, clearness, caution. What must be the conclusion ? 
Either Jesus Christ is the Son of God, which He declared Himself 
to be, at the adjuration of the high priest on the day of His death, 
or He is not. The pathways divide. Whither go we ? 



XLVi.— Cbri6t a fIDan ®nl?* 

Introduction. — There can be no doubt about the importance of the 
dogma of the divinity of Christ. It is as momentous as the existence 
of God is. In fact, all the Christian tenets hang together. Remove 
one and the others are foundationless. Deny the divinity of Christ 
and you deny the existence of God and the immortality of the soul 
and the whole hereafter. Repudiation of Christ's godhead means 
an insult to the Deity. It impugns His veracity and overthrows all 
evidence. Christ was one who came credentialed from God. His 
testimony unto Himself was backed by prophecy and miracle, which 
are the only voices wherein, as far as we know, God does or can 
speak to man. The spoken declaration whereby Jesus announced 
His message is transcendentally marvelous. No such utterance was 
ever made before or since. It is impossible to mistake the meaning 
of His words. There is nothing hazy about them. Nor did the 
leaders among the Jews make any mistake. They knew and under- 
stood what He said, and the very lucidness of His terms appalled 
them and stirred up their lowest natures, whence their jealousy and 
hatred. No violence of theirs was of sufficient force to make Him 
yield one jot or tittle of His claim. It is no wonder that, when 
viewed from all sides, His announcement of His divinity grows into 
an irrefragable argument thereof. 

I. It is undeniable, and herein lies the strength of His position, 
that Christ said He was God and the world believed Him. Men, in 
confirmation of what they allege, resort to the help of matter, of 

IIS 



ii6 APOLOGETICA, 

the senses, of mind. Christ made no use of brute force. On the 
contrary, He surrendered to it His whole career. He was no conquer- 
ing hero. He came to sheathe the sword, not to wield it. Babylon and 
Rome and Mahomet overran the world by the strength of armed 
hosts. Where lie their empires to-day ? " Put up again thy sword 
into its place " (Matt. xxvi. 52) was the proclamation of Christ. He 
fomented no revolution, He aroused no anarchy, no Socialism. " Give 
unto Caesar what is Caesar's '* was His political formula. 

II. Christ made no appeal to the senses. His teaching was an ir- 
reconcilable enmity with the senses and the passions. He forbade 
anger, hatred, revenge. He inculcated charity, purity, poverty of 
spirit. Sensuality was not written on His standard. Here is His 
device : " Whosoever doth not carry his cross and come after me, 
can not be my disciple*' (Luke xiv. 27). He was the son of the 
carpenter, and the army He led to revolutionize the world consisted 
of twelve Galileans, fishermen and a publican. His word emphasized 
a mortification of the senses. His rewards were in eternity and He 
promised persecution and martyrdom to His followers. 

HI. What were His intellectual resources? The simplicity of 
His doctrine removes it from the exclusion and loftiness of the 
schools. Greece reached its eminence by the superior excellence of 
her arts and her sciences. No such means were employed by Christ. 
There was no effort for effect in all his speech. When He addressed 
Himself to the populace the sublimest doctrine fell from His lips, 
and yet the very children could understand. So we find ourselves 
driven to exclaim that His assertion of His divinity was unsup- 
ported by any natural help. It had only its intrinsic strength to con- 
firm it. It was substantial truth. What was that declaration of 



CHRIST A MAN ONLY, 117 

His? The speech of a fanatic? There is no trace of fanaticism in 
His whole life. No one can characterize His opinions as wild or ex- 
travagant. The speech of a fool ? What is there in all His demeanor 
that savors of folly? If His speech be not that of a fanatic or a 
fool, what is it? The speech of one speaking the truth. There is 
no other inference left us. He was God and man and He came as 
God's ambassador as man, and He came as His own representative as 
God. His word was the speech of God. That word in the be- 
ginning created the world, and in the fulness of time that word was 
God. There is only one equation for this divine declaration of His 
own divinity. We find it in John : " In the beginning was the Word, 
and the Word was with God; and the Word was God." 



XLVii.— Cbrlet voae a flDan ©nil?* 

Introduction. — Sacred Scripture serves two purposes. It is not 
only an inspired, it is also a historical document. In its inspiration 
it is the basis and the proof of all the dogmatic teaching of the 
Church. As a veracious chronicle of the past it occupies indis- 
putably the first place among the testimonials to the truth in the mat- 
ter of God's dealing with His creation, in the matter of Christ's life 
and mission, and in the matter of the upbuilding of the Church. Any 
hypothesis which asserts that it is fraudulent or mythical is absurd. 
It is incontestably proven that every one of its assertions is his- 
torically placed beyond the reach of doubt. " If we were as exacting 
and as critical in regard to ancient and modem works as we are in 
regard to the New Testament, history would still be unwritten for 
want of duly authenticated records ; we would be still in the myth- 
ological age" (Lacordaire, 6th conf. on Jesus Christ). It is in this 
sense that we refer to the Bible in our proofs of the divinity of the 
Saviour. 

I. It is indisputable that Christ, who has been adored as God 
for so many centuries by followers who glory in bearing His name 
and in accepting His doctrine, is entitled to this worship because He 
is really God. We have already appealed to His own declaration con- 
cerning Himself. He proclaimed Himself God equal in all things 
to His Father. He claims for Himself that which is the attribute 
of God alone: John xiv. 6; John viii. 12; John vi. 51 ; John vi. 55 ; 
John xi. 25 ; Mark xiii. 27; Matt. xiii. 41 ; John vi. 21 ; John xv. 16; 

118 



CHRIST WAS A MAN ONLY. 119 

John xiv. 13 ; Matt. xix. 29 ; John v. 19 ; John xiv. 23 ; Matt. xvi. 15. 
He forgives sins: Luke v. 21. He proclaims Himself eternal: John 
viii. 58. He knows all things: Matt. xix. 4. He is omnipotent: John 
x. 18. He asserts His identity with the Father: John x. 30. We ap- 
pend the above as corroborative of what has already been stated. 

II. Let us just mention the proofs of the divinity of Christ as 
they are formulated by Rev. W. Devivier, S.J., in his defense of the 
CathoHc faith. These arguments expand into a cumulative con- 
firmation which is simply irresistible. There are the miracles per- 
formed. The miracles have not all been narrated, for St. John tells 
us : " But there are also many other things which Jesus did, which, 
if they were written every one, the world itself, I think, would not 
be able to contain the books that should be written ^' (xxi. 25). Yet 
how numerous these wonders are ! In them He sways all nature as 
He pleases. Investigate the cure of the paralytic ; Matt. ix. ; Luke v. ; 
and the two multiplications of the loaves ; Matt. xiv. and xv. ; and the 
healing of the man born blind ; John ix. ; and the resurrections from 
death: Matt. xi. 5. To this we must add the consideration that 
they were performed publicly, that they were notorious, that these 
wonders have been examined by friends and foes for nineteen hun- 
dred years, and that they were all done with the view of proving that 
He was of God and that He was God ; John xi. Then we have the 
crowning miracle of all, that is. His own resurrection. This resur- 
rection He predicted. All the circumstances connected with it, in- 
stead of detracting from its veracity, go to place it among the great 
and unique facts of history. Rather it stands alone. There is no 
other happening in the past like it or so duly authenticated. The 
mere reading of it in the pages of the Evangelists appeals to us 
with an eloquence that is bewitchingly irrefragable in its evidence. 



I20 APOLOGETICA. 

No fact has ever been so thoroughly attested. It is the strongest 
brief in the possession of the Church. It was the banner miracle. 
It revolutionized and converted the world. 

III. Other proofs of the divinity of Christ are found in the 
prophecies and their literal fulfilment. They point unmistakably 
to the person and mission of Christ. They foretell the coming and 
the qualities of the Messias, His birth and youth, His apostolic 
career, His Passion and death, the establishment of His Church, the 
sacrifice of the New Law. He directed His hearers to those mani- 
fold predictions of His advent : " Search the Scriptures, for you 
think in them to have life everlasting, and the same are they that 
give testimony of me " (John v. 39). Pascal calls the fulfilment of 
the prophecies a perpetual miracle. Hence the striking conclusion 
of Lacordaire : " Supported by all that is most illustrious before and 
after Him, His personal physiognomy still stands out from this sub- 
lime scene, and reveals to us the God who has neither model nor 
equal." 



XLViii.— ebri6t a riDere fIDan ®nl^ 

Introduction. — There are many reasons which militate against the 
thesis implied in the above assertion. Foremost among them is the 
mexplicable attitude of its supporters. We ask the question : " Why- 
have the Gentiles raged and the people devised vain things? The 
kings of the earth stood up and the princes met together against 
the Lord and against his Christ.'^ Yes; we ask why they are ani- 
mated with such fierce hostiUty against God and His Christ? What 
is there in the conception of the Deity to arouse such hatred? Why 
do they seek to obliterate the idea of the divinity ? Is there anything 
in that idea that is subversive of the moral order? Does that idea 
awaken or help to subdue the passions? Is there anything that is 
good or lofty in the thoughts of men or in their lives which it an- 
tagonizes? We wait in vain for one reason why the concept should 
be banished from the intelligence of man. In fact, everything we 
know about man and his propensities should make us hail — even 
were the concept a human invention or fiction — it as an emancipating 
agency. The same is true of Christ. What has He done to become 
the target of so much hostility and abuse? As a mere man He 
sparkles like a " jewel on the outstretched forefinger of all time." 
Had He not lived, what would all history since that time have been ? 
He is the exponent of sublime ideals. His teachings have reformed 
the world. Hence a mere man. He should be niched higher than 
any other who has played a part on the stage of the world. But He 
is not mere man. 

121 



ii2 APOLOGETiCA. 

I. He is God. We adduce as proof of this the miracles of the 
apostles and disciples. These wonders they performed in virtue of 
the promise and omnipotence of Christ (John xiv. 12 ; Mark xvi. 17). 
The acts of the apostles recite continual and stupendous marvels 
operated by the apostles and their followers in the name of Jesus. 
The new religion had to be confirmed, and nothing is so corrobora- 
tive as a miracle. Among the numerous prodigies after the ascension 
stand out conspicuously the descent of the Holy Ghost and the con- 
version of St. Paul. (See Acts ii. and ix., and the Epistle to the 
Galatians i. 15.) This gift of miracles has endured till the pres- 
ent time. One genuine miracle is enough to prove that in favor of 
which it is performed. How irresistible, therefore, to any honest 
thinker must be the cogency of centuries of miracles ? 

II. There are the prophecies made by Christ. They were all 
verified. He foretold His Passion, death, and resurrection (Mark 
X. ; Matt. xvii.). He announced the coming destruction of Jerusalem 
and the dispersion of the Jews (Luke xix. and xxi. ; Matt. xxiv. ; 
Mark xiii.). He prepared, by prophecy, all His followers for the 
days of persecution, which began with the synagogue and ended 
with the Roman emperors (Acts i. 8). The propagation of the 
Church of Christ is among the most stupendous occurrences in the 
annals of the world. No natural reasons can explain it. It an- 
nounced itself everywhere, and everywhere was it received, and 
among all classes and in an incredibly short time. It had everything 
against it. It had secular authority and secular force ; it had wealth 
and learning. It had the opposition of every element that went to 
make up the then civilization. On its side there was nothing except 
what was repugnant to the world spirit. To the human mind it pre- 
sented mystery, to the human passions it presented restraint and 



CHRIST A MERE MAN ONLY, 123 

penance, and yet it flooded the world like an invading sea. It had 
only one banner. It was a dead, helpless, bruised figure on an igfno- 
minious cross. Nothing, absolutely nothing, was in its favor, every- 
thing, absolutely everything, was against it. Impossible to con- 
jecture the number of its adherents. We know that ten emperors 
fell upon the new religion with all the weight of their authority and 
cruelty, and that during that period a million died gladly for their 
faith. Add to this that we have the testimony of two thousand 
years proclaiming the verification of the utterances of Christ con- 
cerning His Church. As it was in the beginning, so shall it be 
until the end. " Why have the Gentiles raged and the people de- 
vised vain things ? " When will the world learn the lesson that the 
GaHlean will ever conquer, that He will be with His Church until the 
consummation of time, and that the gates of hell will not prevail 
against His Church forever? 



XLix.— cbriat a flftere ffiam 

Introduction. — It is a matter of history that wherever reh'gion has 
been at a low ebb among a people, that people were possessed of a 
very inferior standard of morality. Their ideas were lofty in propor- 
tion to their concepts of the Deity. Monotheism has always revealed 
a high standard of thought and action. Idolatry has always been 
accompanied by a degraded misconception of conduct, even in the 
most elementary perceptions of wrong and right. Barbarism was a 
lapse from the saving primeval traditions of the race. It may be 
securely asserted that no barbarism has ever brought man down to 
such depths of iniquity as the lapse from Christianity wherever it 
has occurred. Witness the excesses of the French revolution. His- 
tory has still one experience untried. The story has yet to be written 
of a nation or a colony established on the principles of infidelity 
and inscribing on its labarum, " No God. No Christ. No religion." 
We shudder to think of the crimes, of the enormities that would 
prevail under such a banner. We know what atheism is productive 
of in the individual. Fancy a nation of atheists ! Fancy a people of 
Voltaires, of Diderots, of Rousseaus as leaders and their followers, 
disciples impregnated with their blasphemies, with their infamous 
views of man, his origin and his destiny ! Where would be authority, 
law, order? How long would such a republic endure? Is such a 
condition of affairs among the probabilities of the future? We 
answer, Why not? And yet we are compelled to say we not only 
hope not, but also that we believe not. We must remember that, 

124 



CHRIST A MERE MAN. 125 

though the world forget God, God will not forget the world. The 
only salvation lies in submission to Christ, who is not a mere man, 
but God. 

I. Emphatically witnesses to this great truth are the martyrs. A 
martyr is essentially a witness — martyrdom means testimony. When 
we consider their very large number, from Nero to Constantine, that 
is for two hundred and fifty years, when we consider the terrible 
nature of their tortures, when we consider their courage, the many 
conditions of life in which they moved, the manner, calm and joyful, 
in which they suffered, the marvels that so frequently attended their 
valiant patience, the multitudinous conversions which were the fruit 
of their sacrifice, we can not explain their conduct in any other way 
than that the religion for which they laid down their lives was a 
divine religion, and its Author divine as well. There is very little 
doubt as to their number. It must be admitted that they were perse- 
cuted through hatred for the Christian religion. They died, not 
through blind fanaticism. They were clear eyed witnesses. They 
understood their creed. They submitted to all their tortures because 
they knew that Christ was God. 

II. Again in confirmation of all our assertions we have the won- 
derful change operated in the world by the introduction of the re- 
ligion of Christ. We know what the world was before Christ and 
at the time of His coming — the state of private and public morals, 
of the family, of society. We have the startling evidence of a sudden 
and gradually universal change of thoughts, ideas, principles. We 
have the creation of a new public conscience. All this proves divinity, 
for it is impossible to adduce a single human agency or a collection 
of human agencies capable to account for this transformation. Add 



126 APOLOVETICA. 

to this the doctrine which Christ taught. His doctrine was never 
taught in its entirety and in its unity before His time. He taught 
concerning the Father, God, and His attributes, concerning man 
and the world. There are His moral precepts. They are perfect, 
ideal, model, regenerating. He was the first to make clear in His 
own words and through His Church the -nature of divine worship. 
His doctrine stands out unique in presence of all the doctrines of the 
world. It moved the admiration of His contemporaries, and has com- 
pelled the wonder of all subsequent ages. In itself it is divine. And 
He proved that it was from God and that He was God. A careful 
investigation will disprove the objections which have been urged 
from the resemblance between the teaching of it and that of other 
religions. Buddhism, as inquirers pursue honestly their researches, 
Buddhism ceases to be in any way a teaching which can lay claim 
to the excellence of the doctrine of Jesus. Let what they like be 
vindicated for Buddhism or any other " ism," it still remains proven 
that Christ is not a mere man, but God. 



L.~ti;bere is no eternal ipuniebment 

Introduction. — Men, it is a very remarkable fact, never quarrel 
with heaven. They are willing to concede that there may be beyond 
the confines of this earth a place where every one will be supremely 
happy. When, however, they are called upon to admit that there is 
also a place where God's creatures are to suffer unimaginable and 
unconceivable pain forever, forthwith they recoil and they deny. 
But it is very patent that denial will not obliterate everlasting penalty, 
no more than the convict, by refusing to believe in a penitentiary or 
a dungeon, will find himself free instead of passing months or years 
or a lifetime behind prison bars. No denial of ours will change the 
words of Christ. His words are explicit. We find the doctrine of 
everlasting punishment emphasized (Mark ix. 41-47). On this 
occasion Our Lord repeats three times the statement of the unquench- 
able fire of hell where the worm never dies. Some repudiate the idea 
of hell being eternal. Some contend that on a future day the rigors 
of the flames will be mitigated and that there will be a modicum of 
happiness introduced. Others claim that there will be a new period 
of probation granted each sinner in eternity. Others simply say 
there is no hell. We may find it difficult to prove from reason alone 
that the sentence of condemnation will be an eternal one. In this 
case we have to fall back upon the divine and infallible teaching of 
the Redeemer. 

I. Whatever opinion mentioned above may be sustained, this 
answer is always in order, that mere statement is not proof, nor is 

127 



I2S APOLOGETICA, 

mere contradiction a successful rebuttal. St. Augustine tells us that 
every one who denies God's existence makes the denial because he has 
a reason for wishing God not to be. Something similar may be 
advanced regarding those who assert that there is no hell, or, if there 
be, it is not everlasting. It is to be feared that all these individuals 
repudiate the dogma because their conscience makes them afraid 
that in their moral condition were they to stand before God for judg- 
ment, they could expect no other verdict than an adverse one. How- 
ever, be things as they may, the teaching of the Church is safer to 
follow than their denial. They, of course, advance some reasons. 
Let us see what they are worth. 

II. There is no hell because a punishment such as is that pro- 
fessed by Christianity is repugnant to the divine perfections. It can 
not be reconciled with divine justice or with divine goodness. It is 
irreconcilable with God's justice for the reason that there is no pro- 
portion between a crime committed, however great, and the penalty. 
It is very hard to decide as to the proportion. Yet we are justified in 
claiming that the one whose law and whose dignity are offended by a 
deliberate and grave wrong is infinite. There should be something 
infinite, it seems to us, in the retribution. It can not be in the torture 
itself inflicted, because no finite being could bear the weight of an 
infinite woe or pain. There appears to remain only what we might 
call an external infinite, and that is perpetuity of duration. There 
can be no doubt that God's law must have a sanction, and a sanction 
commensurate with the importance of the law and the majesty of 
the Law Giver. 

III. With regard to the divine goodness we must keep in mind 
that God's goodness is a perfection, and while it includes boundless 



THERE IS NO ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 129 

mercy it excludes all vacillation and impotent condescension. Par- 
don me if I say that God is good, but that He is not " goody-goody." 
If we carry the argument from goodness to its limit, then there will 
exist no sanction. In this case God's goodness would be the cause 
of innumerable disorders, and would render the divine will of no 
account in the eyes of creatures. God, besides, does not punish as 
if moved by what we conceive as revenge. God hates only the sin, 
and were it possible to detach the sin from the sinner, then He would 
doom the sin alone. The divine goodness, by its very nature, must 
abhor sin, must hate it because it is an attack upon all the Maker's 
attributes, and so He must punish it, and who can say to Omnipotence 
outraged, " Thus far and no farther " ? It is not so much the length 
of time it takes to commit a crime we have to consider, as the ingrati- 
tude of the criminal and the ineffable majesty of the offended Deity. 



Li.—Zbcve iB no leternal puni^bment 

Introduction. — Between theory and fact there is an immeasurable 
and, in many cases, an impassable space. The same distance in- 
tervenes between negation and proof. It is very noticeable that 
when a scientific theory is broached and enunciated only as a 
theory, there is always a mob of sciolists who seize upon the hy- 
pothesis and proclaim it as a fact, especially when it in any way 
impugns the dogmas of Christianity. This is evidenced by the one 
time wide spread of Darwinism and Positivism and Agnosticism. 
There are some facts which scientific investigation never can touch. 
We have in mind the existence of the human soul, which has been 
contradicted because forsooth the dissector's scalpel has never laid 
that immortal spark bare ; as if a principle of life could be found in 
a body, in which all vitality is extinct. This view is applicable to the 
protestations of those who oppugn the teaching of the Church re- 
garding hell. All that they have advanced is reducible to a negation. 
As in the case of the existence of God, so in the question of eternal 
punishment, not a shred of proof is to the fore against either one 
or other truth. 

I. Reason has not disproved the everlasting rigors of God's jus- 
tice against sin. Must sin be punished or not? Surely, every one 
will grant that unto crime there must be meted out a penalty. This 
penalty rests beyond a doubt with the lawgiver. The legislator in 
this case being the Supreme Legislator, who has not to render an 
account to any one of His decrees, ought, at least, be allowed the 
privilege to affix the sanction which in His infinite wisdom He 
deems efficient. From other sources we have the assurance that 

130 



THERE IS NO ETERNAL PUNISHMENT, 131 

His sentence under given circumstances will be eternal doom. Is 
this sentence too severe, too disproportionate? Severe, it certainly 
is ; unjustly severe v^^ho dares say ? Disproportionate ? Again who 
will have the temerity to make this assertion? On what basis will 
he ground the accusation? Is it not within the limits of reason to 
say that God must determine a punishment which by its very nature 
is sufficient to deter man from crime ? Independently of other legiti- 
mate considerations, are we not obliged to say that the human race 
would stop at no infraction of the divine law were the mulct 
not the eternal forfeiture of happiness ? Even the knowledge of the 
consequences does not prevent the violation of the law. Yet as far 
as punishment is viewed as a deterrent, hell from this standpoint 
seems to be inevitable. We expect not too much when we affirm 
that certainly there is more in favor of, in our philosophy, 
than against eternal punishment. 

Let us (11.) subjoin here, from another repertory of argument, 
but only as corroborative, the fact of the Incarnation. The sacrifice 
of Christ was necessary for our salvation. Is it safe to infer that an 
infinite victim was demanded unless there was a forfeit in some way 
infinite to be canceled? Would the shedding of blood divine have 
been justified were there only question, as far as man is concerned, 
of liberating the race from temporal disaster? Undoubtedly there 
is the cloud of mystery hanging ov^r this puzzling problem. Faith 
will penetrate the cloud. Reason must simply bow down and adore. 
I know God is just. He makes a compact with temptation that we 
will not be tried beyond our strength, and He will not punish beyond 
our deserts. In the uncertainty, what should reason suggest? Bet- 
ter, our sane sense will tell us to be on the safe side. Security is 
where the Church is. Let us pray the prayer of St. Augustine: 
** Lord, try us ; punish us here — only save us in eternity," 



Lii.— ztberc i^ no leternal punlabment 

Introduction. — Protestantism is protean in its nature. Its his- 
tory is the history of mutability and variation. Little by little it 
extruded all Catholic doctrine, either expressly or by implication. 
In one or other of its forms it denied purgatory and then hell, and 
in recent years there has been proclaimed not the purgatory of tra- 
dition, but a parody or burlesque thereof. The large charter of liberty 
granted to all its votaries makes not only possible but inevitable the 
introduction of views which reflect not credit but ridicule on the 
minds of the abettors. What is there essential to Christianity which 
has not been denied by leaders outside the Church? Free to use 
the Bible as they please, a bishop attacks its veracity; free to find 
in the Bible whatever caprice suggested, some of their preachers 
denied the Trinity, the divinity of Christ and the eternal sanction 
of God's law. In the rebound we have the opinion of those who 
hold that there is another life, but that in that life man has another 
chance. If he profit by this new, unauthorized, unfounded dispen- 
sation, his will be an eternity of bliss unalloyed; if he does not, 
then divine justice must take its course. 

I. We are unable to see how it can be logically advanced that 
the time of probation extends beyond the limits of this life. We 
ask where and what is the proof ? It is not mentioned in Scripture. 
It is not found among the traditionary utterances of Christ or of 
the apostles. Moreover, it is not an intuitive or a priori truth. Vox 

13a 



THERE IS NO ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 133 

et praeterea nihil. Let us suppose that after death would begin a 
probationary period. What about the moral law and moral order 
here? What regard would the legislator evince were such the case? 
It would be a declaration on his part that the natural law here was 
of very little significance in his eyes. It would be simply throw- 
ing all integrity to the winds. There would be no inducement to 
practise virtue. The world is bad enough as it is ; what would it be 
were there this so-called post mortem probation? To support it, 
is insulting to God. Certainly this seems to be the very strongest 
kind of an argument against such a theory, for theory only it is, 
\vere it even worthy of the name. It would be very difficult to 
imagine an opinion more repugnant to the ordinary views of men 
upon such momentous questions as public honesty and domestic and 
social uprightness. 

II. Another class of " anti-sheolists " are what one might term 
spiritual " Nihilists." Their contention is that the sanction of the 
law consists in annihilation. They hold that eternal unconscious- 
ness will be the penalty. The same query is again, as always, 
forced upon us. What is the basis of their system of ethics ? What 
is their proof ? Who is their prophet? Who their Messias ? There 
is blasphemy in this taking the punishment out of the hands of the 
Creator and placing it in the will of the creature. First, annihila- 
tion would not be a penalty. Penalty supposes pain. Where there 
is eternal unconsciousness there is no pain. They contradict them- 
selves, saying that crime deserves punishment, and then affixing 
annihilation as the sentence. But it is needless to proceed. It has 
been a fixed belief everywhere and at all times that the soul will 
survive the body, and that there are rewards for virtue and punish- 
ment for crime. Plato, in his Phaedrus, having determined the im- 



134 APOLOGETICA, 

mortality of the soul, says that after the separation souls will be 
led to a supreme tribunal in order " to be judged as to whether they 
lived well or not. Those who are found incurable on account of the 
magnitude of their enormities, their many colossal sacrileges, their 
murders, and inexcusable iniquities, or other crimes, them fate will 
cast into Tartarus, whence they will escape never." Thanks sincere 
and incessant be ours, that our faith has erected in the world the 
dogma of an eternal hell for the impenitent — a dogma that warns, 
deters, and saves. 

Note. — The matter for preparing the foregoing sketches has been taken 
from Hurter, S J. ; Devivier, S J. ; Hettinger, and other philosophers and 
theologians. 



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